Some discussion already:
http://typographica.org/2010/on-typography/the-webfont-revolution-is-ove...

(A good article by Stephen Coles, above all.)

Two steps forward, one step back, but at least it's free;)

Does this display the actual hinting-assisted characters? Is that an OS X default when you turn off the anti-aliasing? (I believe OS X ignores hinting data entirely.) Just two questions that popped up. I'm liking this a lot, despite the step back — at least I don't have an excuse not to check anymore, and for my own font development, it's a lot easier to check the hinting like this.

Well done, Adam. Now I need a Firefox extension with DirectWrite rendering under windows XP. :-)

David,

I'm only exposing what's in the OS. No magic :)

Rob,

the black-and-white rendering does indeed use hinting to its full extent. It's switching to the "old" Apple TrueType rasterizer. Verdana and Georgia render pretty much identically to what they look like on Windows. There may be minimal differences due to some potential differences in how Apple and Microsoft treats some instructions, but really really minimal.

Actually, I was rather surprised that the CSS -webkit-font-smoothing:none property (which my tool simply applies to the "body" element of the HTML page -- there is no magic involved) works, and what results it delivers. I did not know that hinted TrueType display is possible in modern Cocoa apps, but well -- it seems that it works.

As I explained in the Typographica thread, I do not consider the tool an "ultimate solution", more a little helper that helps the lazy Mac user who does not own a Windows license to get a peek at what Windows rendering with ClearType disabled might look like.

Best,
Adam

Thanks, Adam. I also didn't think Cocoa apps would even parse the hinting data. Very nice in any case — it's not an “ultimate tool”, sure, but it makes the threshold for preliminary checking of hinting a fair bit lower.

AT> ...a little helper that helps the lazy Mac user who does not own a Windows license to get a peek at what Windows rendering with ClearType disabled might look like.

Oh, my mistake, one step forward, two operating systems back. But...

>...I did not know that hinted TrueType display is possible in modern Cocoa apps

It's always been possible and has always existed as a preference in "Appearance" with a range from 4 to 12.

Check and see if Lucida Grande anti-aliases still with your tool.

Apropos of quick checks, on Windows, Safari for Win has several rendering modes available in its Preferences that I find handy until bouncing a font over to the MAC for a native look-see.

The changes are immediate.

One other solution, short of multiple machines, is VMWare or Parallels running XP or Win7, or Ubuntu, for that matter. They can all run in virtual machines on the Mac.

None of which look like Mac aliasing fonts.

Yawn.

The pixel outerform of a TT glyph as it's hinted to appear onscreen doesn't look like it's outlines, either. Yet there is a relationship. One thing can tell you things about the other once you become familiar with that relationship.

I find printing to a PDF and viewing the font in that helpful, too. That isn't native to any OS, either.

To each their own.
But sooner or later you DO need to look at it in its native environ and not some gif screenshot.
Unfortunately, this is becoming a very expensive proposition. A major problem.

Sorry to bore you, David. Some espresso, perhaps?