fortes.com - Latest Comments in Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

Gustavo Guerra — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:02:57 -0000

I've been searching for a way to disable clear-type in WPF and it noticed your comment: "(actually, there is a way, but itâ€™s pretty awkward and not really well known)".
Could you please give any pointer to how to do it?

Best Regards,
Gustavo Guerra

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

Bill Hill — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:25:08 -0000

Hi fil, long time no speak!

Mike Duggan makes a good point. I'd expect a hinted TrueType version of Cheltenham to be a lot sharper than the 12 point you show. Mike did the hinting on the New York Times Reader fonts but is too modest to say how great they look and how readable they are...

One question: Since 9pt is at the lowest limit for readability in print, at normal reading distance, and people frequently read on their screen from slightly further away, why aren't you making 10point your minimum size if readability is your goal? 11 point is usually optimal, depending on the specific font design (x-height etc).

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

Yaroslav Rutsky — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 04:09:46 -0000

Some basic information about text rasterization algorithms:
http://antigrain.com/resear...

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

michael duggan — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:12:57 -0000

is the version of ITC Cheltenham a TrueType font or a Postscript Type 1 font? The example you show for WPF rendering of ITC Cheltenham, does not look hinted, and a TrueType version would likely look much sharper, as in the NewYorkTimes Reader.

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

Robert O'Callahan — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 20:20:29 -0000

I'm one of the developers working to improve text rendering in Firefox. We've been told by Microsoft developers that there are actually three different levels of text rendering quality on Windows:
1) Cleartype with "compatible widths". What you currently get on XP. Probably what you're seeing in your Firefox screenshot. This mode doesn't allow Cleartype hinting to change glyph advance widths, to preserve exact layout compatibility with older Windows versions.
2) Cleartype with "natural widths". GDI apps can apparently turn this on and allow Cleartype hinting to change advance widths. This should help a lot but we haven't found out how to turn this on yet.
3) WPF. This is better than GDI apps can get because it offers subpixel positioning (GDI APIs can't deal with fractional pixel advances) and WPF antialiases in the vertical direction and the above options don't.
Slightly more discussion on my blog:
http://weblogs.mozillazine....

We can't make Firefox a WPF app so it looks like option 2 is the best we can do for the immediate future on Windows. At some point we may have to embed our own font rasterizer to get around this problem. It's too bad because our upper-level code supports subpixel positioning and antialiasing just fine (in the new code we've written for Firefox 3): those features work fine on Mac and Linux. So for now if you want to see what Firefox can do text-wise, try it on something other than Windows :-).

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

mitch — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:43:58 -0000

I did a quick test to see how the text looked in Flex using FlashType rendering and I think it's definitely better than WPF or Flash (i only tried verdana at 9pt though).

You can check out the test at http://www.sliderocket.com/...

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

Fortes — Mon, 28 May 2007 20:18:59 -0000

Slyi: I'm aware that Silverlight allows custom fonts, but the current version doesn't support the Adobe CFF format fonts -- and the two custom fonts I was using happen to be CFF format. I plan on doing a follow-up to this post where I investigate Silverlight's rendering.

Andrew: I think sIFR is a good hack (I wish it worked better with transparent backgrounds) for headlines and other small pieces of text. Hopefully the browsers will catch up soon and make it irrelevant.

Chris: I have not tuned ClearType yet -- I'll make sure to do that before my follow up.

Mike: The screenshots were all on my PC running Windows XP. I'm not sure why it's not hinting though -- is there any way for me to test?

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

mike duggan — Mon, 28 May 2007 12:10:35 -0000

hi Filipe

it looks like the screen shots are taken from a Mac? is this correct? I am assuming this, as the last screen shot you show for instance, the 12 point Cheltenham in WPF looks like there is no hinting?

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

Chris H — Fri, 25 May 2007 18:16:35 -0000

Btw, I'm a big fan of your new adaptive-width site design!

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

Chris H — Fri, 25 May 2007 18:14:35 -0000

The bitmaps of WPF rendered text looks to be a bit lighter than what I normally see on my screen natively... have you adjusted the gamma values differently for your screen?

http://www.microsoft.com/ty...
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/...

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

Andrew Shebanow — Fri, 25 May 2007 17:58:24 -0000

Nice work. I guess the focus on small font sizes comes from looking at this from a reading experience POV, right? Curious what you think of techniques like sIFR for headlines and such...

Re: Font Rendering Across Rich Platforms

slyi — Fri, 25 May 2007 17:38:21 -0000

BTW: Silverlight does allow custom fonts http://blogs.msdn.com/silve... or subsetted fonts using xps odttf files