This isn’t news, Microsoft has always explained that the Cleartype rendering method only works when the screen is in a horizontal state. As for his point about automatically disabling Cleartype in portrait mode, that should be a feature of the driver that handles the change, which is not being produced by Microsoft.

If Nelson Muntz had invented FontFocus, around this time he would probably be saying: Ha Ha!

:)

ClearType'd text looks different* in portrait, some may say worse, but utterly unreadable is nonsense. Maybe people are used to less than optimum type but Tablet PC's have been out for many years with very few complaints related to this issue.

Cheers, Si

*This is the main Reason Zune uses regular antialiasing, they wanted the same text experience regardless of orientation.

Then how 'bout: "...an unprecedented innovation in font display technology that dramatically improves font display resolution and marks a genuine breakthrough in screen readability..." sometimes.

Then for others, " "...an unpredictable annoyance in font display technology that drastically impairs font display resolution and marks a gradual breakup of screen readability..." sometimes.

And, what happened to the review of the Cleartype patent that was on the MS web site!? I wanted to read what that guy who's an expert in video games thinks of it, (he should know right?), but it all disapppeared?

Cheers!

Enough already with the technology!
What about the type designs?
In themselves, the typefaces are fine, but as a group they lack utility, being too much the same in proportion and contrast.
Did the technology channel these designs into their similarity, or was it a corporate influence?
Wouldn't users have appreciated, for instance, a condensed style, an ultra light, and a slab serif as part of the CT toolbox?
Surely Cleartype can render such things -- why the omission?

Mystery of the missing patents! And the missing weights! I think these deserve their own threads.

To be entirely fair, I think the sensitivity of ClearType to subpixel layout is a relatively minor problem, and I'd imagine that modern video connection standards such as EDID and their associated drivers will evolve fairly quickly to the point where they get the information across reliably (see this thread for a bit of discussion about getting that implemented on Linux).

About the only use case where FontFocus is an obvious win is displaying PDF files (where the layout and metrics are inflexible) on monochrome displays like e-ink readers. Unfortunately, despite some early high hopes, it doesn't look like that market is going to amount to a hill of beans.

The more adventuresome among you may find Maxim Shemanarev's notes on font rendering of interest. There are numerous methodological and other problems with his comparisons, but I'm glad that there are people out there who care about getting it right and are paying attention. I'll probably write an extended blog about all this, but am characteristically short on time right now.

"you may find Maxim Shemanarev’s notes on font rendering of interest"
Yes thanks. While I'm delighted that this is getting more and more and more attention, yet another imaging specialist with eyes like a potato is not always fun to read.

"while Microsoft uses their aggressive hinting there will be no higher than 100 DPI resolutions, period."
Ya?

"I would prefer to see regular, aliased text, rather than anti-aliased, with inadequately used hints."
Ya?

"is there sub-pixel positioning in Windows Vista? It looks like there is not.
:-)

Let's hope Raph has corrective capabilities.

"Mystery of the missing patents! And the missing weights! I think these deserve their own threads"
Why? they already had a whole blanket thrown over them, no?

Cheers!