Thread: 770 font size
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aflegg's Avatar
Posts: 1,463 | Thanked: 81 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ UK
#14
Originally Posted by fanoush
I said small fonts. It is a known fact that handcrafted bitmap (non-AA) fonts are better at small sizes than AA fonts.
It's widely commented, but hardly a "known fact". Mostly by people who've never seen sub-pixel antialiasing with a well-hinted font.

All good truetype (vector) fonts contain handcrafted bitmap versions for small sizes which is supposed to be not antialiased.
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.

for explanation see bottom of http://www.wpdfd.com/wpdtypo3.htm
That webpage sets up a whole series of straw-man arguments. Changing the colours of an anti-aliased font to highlight the effect destroys the effect - and results in it looking crap.

With a 225dpi screen, it's practically impossible to see the individual pixels smoothing the aliasing so it's a very subtle (and effective) technique for improving the rendering.

Cheers,

Andrew