Thread: 770 font size
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Posts: 2,152 | Thanked: 1,490 times | Joined on Jan 2006 @ Czech Republic
#15
Originally Posted by aflegg
It's widely commented, but hardly a "known fact". Mostly by people who've never seen sub-pixel antialiasing with a well-hinted font.
OK, agreed, it's widely commented then As for the well-hinted fonts, yes maybe. Can you give some exaple of well-hinted font? I think at small sizes there is no such thing. IMO this is said mostly by people who never seen good bitmap font ;-) The best font at small size I've seen so far is Tahoma (default in windows XP). Also default fonts in PalmOS at 320x320 are quite good.

I've seen cleartype in windows XP. I've seen freetype in my gentoo installation with bytecode interpreter enabled and subpixel rendeding turned on. But first thing I do is to disable cleartype in XP and disable subpixel rendering in KDE or GNOME for sizes less than 12. Subpixel rendering or antialiasing looks great at bigger sizes but for small sizes it produces very pretty and very smooth but almost unreadable crap which gives me a headache after reading it for longer time. Well at least it really is a known fact that blurry edges produce more eye strain than crisp, simple shapes. Fonts in Opera on N770 at 100% is nice example of this. But true that bigger fonts are very nice indeed.

Originally Posted by aflegg
Really? That's news to me, I knew they contained hinting and scaffolding information, and potentially slightly different vectors for different sizes; but I've never seen a vector font containing a bitmap version to be rendered in preference.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/tt/sbit.htm

also see google cache, bottom of the page for nice description
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:...e+bitmap+fonts
It is right there "Another area where bitmap fonts are being used is in the TrueType or OpenType format itself. It is possible to add bitmaps to TrueType fonts. More than that it is the preferred format used below sizes of 12 pt. From that point of view, bitmapping is the ultimate form of hinting."

Interesting that they shortened the article later a bit in favor of your opinion So I agree it is matter of personal opinion. My choice is readability and crisp shapes. Other people may prefer smooth looking fonts which are pretty but not so easy to the eyes.

Last edited by fanoush; 2006-04-02 at 15:52.