Do you really think Bruno "lays it all out"? He seems to be just as willing to bend bitmaps as George in order to make his point. Take the first image, the one he labels “Arial 14pt” – I don’t think you can generate that anti-aliased bitmap in any version of Windows at that size.

It's valid to complain that Microsoft hasn't updated the rendering in IE to take advantage of the latest versions of ClearType, but to fail to mention or consider WPF text rendering seems to be a deliberate omission.

The Arial image is just an example of what Anti-Aliasing *IS* - it's not a Windows image nor is it purported to be one. it's not an example of "bad" or "good" - just an exampe showing the difference between something that isn't and something that is anti-aliased. I show manual examples directly after it, clearly also not indicative of Windows or Mac font rendering.

Further, it's specifically labeled as being rendered by Adobe Illustrator. Keep reading the article and you'll find I touch rather sharply on the fact various software applications contain their own font rasterizing and layout engines.

All image samples are clearly labeled in the article including their source. They're all 100% authentic and very carefully verified to make sure they're accurate. You don't even have to worry about gamma issues of color correcting profiles because all PNGs in use at the site have been stripped of this meta-data, ensuring the images appear the same in all browsers on all platforms.

Brun-o

Hi Bruno,

Welcome to typophile. I think relabeling the image would be a good idea. The positioning of it, and the label indicates it's a Windows screen grab enlarged in illustrator.

How about WPF?

Cheers, Si

I have included an addendum mentioning WPF. I hope you don't take offense to only including it this way. It's really not the point of the article, since I'm not really debating that Windows on a whole is inferior. I've used Windows for 13 years. Still using it today, though my primary Machine is a Mac (have multiple of each in fact).

For XP WPF required installation of .NET and obviously is only available to .NET applications. This is not wholly different than how the system services in Mac OS work, but in that case it's something that exists on every system and used by every application that does not implement its own type rendering.

With regards to the Illustrator sample, I'm about to make a significant addition to it as well as move the image up so it doesn't immediately follow the mention of Windows. The image was generated on a Mac but should be identical to one created with the same application version in Windows.

As an aside, I'm not really a big fan of Arial. I used it mainly because it was a short name I could fit multiple times horizontally within the page layout and it's a face a large number of people would instantly be familiar with.

Bruno

Bruno's blog article makes a fair number of good points; he's right that Ou's original piece ignored/missed that OS X has sub-pixel anti-aliasing available, even if it's off by default. I happen to strongly disagree with the general thrust of his argument that OS X's full-fuzz anti-aliasing is a good thing, but without any actual studies on either side, that's mostly a subjective question right now. I was sad to see pointless ad hominem attacks which detracted from the strengths of the post, however.

But the post also appears to have some highly dubious assertions. One of them: "The fact of the matter is that Windows implements font rasterization pretty much the way it always has." WTF?

Si, isn't ClearType on by default in Vista, even for GDI apps? Even in XP, ClearType can be turned on - and it certainly isn't "pretty much the way it always has." Plus, Bruno must not remember the Windows 3.1 days when there was no anti-aliasing, as best as I can recall.

Anybody know when and with which version Windows added anti-aliasing? Font Bureau claims it was in 1999 in this article: http://type101.fontbureau.com/archives/19. In any case, I'm pretty sure they didn't have system-level anti-aliasing at all back in Windows 3.1. My point is just that Windows and Mac OS have made significant rendering changes several times over the years.

Another strange statement from Bruno: "Your browser is likely using a different font rendering engine than your operating system as well."

The overwhelming majority of Mac users are using Safari, which Bruno admits is using Mac OS's Quartz. The blog says it's aimed at Mac users. Something like 75-80% of Windows users are using IE, which is using Windows GDI rendering. Who exactly is Bruno talking to?

Cheers,

T

Thanks Bruno,

Glad to hear you're updating the article.

I think you make the point in the article that these days we rarely see the system's default text rendering outside of the default browser, and even here the trends are changing – you mention Freetype in Firefox cross-platform, Quartz in Safari cross-platform, etc., and this matches what Adobe has been doing for years with Cooltype and Acrobat viewer even before that, and of course Word reading mode etc., etc.,

Hence my position that the issue here is that IE’s competitors have moved the bar re. rendering (user-preference apart) and that MS has failed to adequately react. MS has a better rendering story than GDI compatible widths ClearType, (which hasn’t really changed since it was implemented in unreleased versions of Windows 2000) but users of IE haven’t benefited from it. Don’t know if you were at TypeCon, but I think one of the best parts of that event was hearing Bill Hill (who has moved from the MS Advanced Reading Technology team AKA ClearType team) to IE. If he can convince his team to move the needle on web typography, rendering etc., then we all benefit.

Cheers, Si

In seeing previous threads on this subject, it has occurred to me that there should be a meta-thread discussing these screenshots everyone is throwing around. Technically, it's necessary to have an actual display device and a human being present to assess things like legibility. So, it's not really possible to "prove" much just by displaying screenshots. For example, CRT intended output can only be judged by looking at the tube itself. There's just a lot of variables in play. I imagine we'll be arguing about it until we all get resolution-independent OSes and some 200ppi displays.

Are there any smug OLPC users out there?
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines/The_Sugar_Inte...

Tom - Windows font smoothing was introduced in August 1995 as part of the Windows 95 plus! pack add-on. As I recall Laurence Penney (that cheeky hacker) produced a hack to activate it without Plus! Soon after we posted an official free download. One aspect not mentioned in the article was the MS philosophy of not applying antialiasing for single pixel stems, which was different from other approaches – hence you’d never see the Arial sample in the article displayed like that until it jumped to two pixel stems.

Carl - Type looks sweet on the OLPC - although we did see some spacing issues at small sizes with hinted fonts.

http://typophile.com/node/34823

I just lost the followup I posted in here by accidentally hitting a link in this tab instead of a new tab. oops.

Let's see if I can't get the gist however.

Yes, Windows' "Font Smoothing" was available when Windows 95 was released and included in their first plus! pack - this is in my blog post. In fact I mention when anti-aliasing and ClearType came to each OS.

"Windows rasterizing" - that's not to say "anti-aliasing." Both are part over rendering, but I was referring to the basic rasterizer which produces pretty much the same result in versions of dating back to 95. Type rendering obviously includes rasterizing, anti-aliasing, kerning, etc. and the overall rendered effect we see now is not the same as it once was. There's also no denying the vast amounts of legacy code that exists in all facets of every Windows framework.

The post was written as if speaking with the average readership of my site. Since only I can see the logs and traffic data, only I know who's using which OS and browser to visit. IE accounts for under 9% of visits and Safari is under 50%. The majority of people visit with a Moz-based browser, Firefox being the most popular of those.

"My buddy and I think Mac OS fonts look like crap" is not how you write an article. I stick by my "colourful" and playful remarks regarding Ou. It's not the first time he's written such drivel and it will likely not be the last.
If one thinks Mac OS fonts are "full-fuzz" then I suspect that person doesn't spend much time around the OS. I use both mac OS and Windows every day and have for years. Each has benefits and of course issues. Font rendering is a strength in Mac OS, not a weakness. I'm also a huge fan of FreeType and quite enjoy its results in Camino as well. Even spec'd it for a software project I designed a few years back.

Bruno

>If one thinks Mac OS fonts are “full-fuzz” then I suspect that person doesn’t spend much time around the OS.

Don't mind Tom, you know how these hardcore Adobe core technology engineers are ;-)

Thanks for mentioning WPF in the update, you're right you can't really take it seriously until there are lots and lots of viewing apps that use it - but if you've not downloaded the NYT reader I'd encourage you to take a peek. On the other hand the fact that there were no fonts for the format didn't stop people claiming TrueType GX was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and we know how that turned out.

Nice spacing ;(.

I'm becoming curiouser and curiouser as to when this glob o blogs is going to stop! with the individual character, alphabet strings and waterfalls, and consider the quality of these text faces in the actual context of their purported purpose. ;)

Also, thanks, I will correct our blog from 1999 back to 1995. It took me that long to find the controls for XP Cleartype, and that was only accomplished with Mr. Hill's guidance to the proper spot!

Cheers!