my two cents:

� Lucida Grande is the ONLY font working well with the osX "grey fuzziness". I hope apple works on delivering improved webfonts for osX, or an improved osX for webfonts.

� MS ClearType antialias is far superior to osX font antialias.

� Quick solution: antialias really makes sense for font sizes >12px, so go to Appearance in your Preferences pane, and disable antialias for fonts under 12px/pts. The small fonts kerning will be better, also.

Try using Courier instead of Courier New as your default font in BBEdit. Courier New is much lighter than Courier and this results in it looking quite light in OSX text rendering.

You might also try using my free Anonymous font. At 9 and 10 points it renders without anti-aliasing in BBEdit on OSX, and, since it is large for its size, 9 and 10 point are closer in size to 11 and 12 point Courier.

Note also that BBEdit has an option in the preferences to turn of anti-aliasing at up to 12 point (see the "Editing: General" panel in the BBEdit Preferences). I don't know if EditingPad Pro has a similar option, but you can also make this change system-wide in the Appearance panel of the System Preferences.

For what it's worth, Courier is the default OSX monospaced font and comes from Apple. Courier New is an optional font which usually comes from Microsoft and was probably installed when you installed a Microsoft app for cross-platform document compatibility with Windows which doesn't have Courier (without the "New").

I'm not going to argue that OS X does a nice job of font rendering, and you certainly point out some particularly weird things. But among those there are a couple of points that need clarification/correction.

There are two definitions of "kerning," neither of which is applicable here. Monospaced fonts generally don't have (either kind of) kerning, and certainly Courier doesn't, regardless of version. I'm pretty sure what you mean is spacing, not kerning.

"and there is no space between the underline and the text."

Generally, the underline is below the baseline, but above the descender line. That's the case here. Yes, it cuts across the descender on the "p." Sad.

Regards,

T

Mark-
That Anonymous font of yours is quiet nice, easily the best I've found so far for editing on osX

Tom-
Thanks for the corrections, like I said I'm not type buff, so I'm sure that I'm off on a lot of my terms. This is still a definite problem though, is it not? What are the short term and long term solutions to this? Is Apple planning on revamping the font rendering system in osX? Is this a problem we can fix just by choosing better fonts to use system wide?

No argument there, that the OS X rasterizer could improve. As I understand it, Apple has been making an ongoing effort to improve their font rendering - as in, it has already changed at least once within the OS X era - and I expect that to continue.

Certainly choosing a font that works as well as possible with the current rendering tech will help, but if you really don't like the current rendering, you may be pretty limited in how much you can improve things through font selection.

Of course, as noted elsewhere in this thread, you can also set the size at which anti-aliasing kicks in on OS X, which may help.

I must admit that the advent of OS X made me particularly glad that Adobe's own applications generally use their own rendering system, independent of the OS.

Regards,

T

Kyle, did you try using Courier instead of Courier New? Also, you can get very close to the way Courier New looks in Windows by setting the aliasing threshold in OSX to 12 point.

(I think BBEdit could do with an option to specify linespacing, but that's their problem not Apple's.)

Mark-
You were right. Plain Courier actually works a LOT better than Courier New. I wonder why this is? I still like Anonymous better, though.

I believe that, first and foremost font rendering must make sure that it doesn't hurt the eyes of the reader.

While OS-X gets better with each version, Windows XP completely fails here. I just had the "pleasure" yesterday, proof reading on a rather new Dell laptop running Windows XP (yes latest update otherwise I wouldn't consider posting here). After a short while I got a feeling similar to being sea-sick and had to quit.

I just wonder why "the big 3" don't get together and develop a stunning rendering system all-together, hmm perhaps because one of them hates their users, oh well.

just 2�

Frank, what were you proofreading and in which app? Which fonts?

If this was a Word Doc and you were using Word 2003 did you try 'reading mode'?

Cheers, Si

Si,

I was proofreading some Word and Powerpoint files in their respective apps, both the most recent versions (my brother's company laptop, they got some MS subscription thing going).

Next time I can get my hands on it I'll try to find that reading mode thing, what does it do? Will it read the text for me? The text is German and French mingled, so that might sound funny.

Or will it just render the glyphs properly (would trigger the next question, why isn't it the standards setting then?)? Without that color frizz? I mean, hey If I want rainbow colors around type, I walk up the Haight Street!

Cheers,
Frank

If you're seeing rainbow fringes, ClearType could be configured incorrectly. There is a page on Microsoft's site where you can correct this via IE. Here is a link:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm

Frank, you didn't mention which font your brother had picked. Mark's suggestion of tuning is a good one. There's also a downloadable tuner now - http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx - there�s also a chance your brother has his resolution set to a non-native setting or that it�s a BGR aligned LCD.

Just as OSX has improved its ClearType style rasterizer in each release, ClearType itself has also been improved - the Reading Mode in Word 2003 uses a better version of ClearType than Windows XP, and Avalon (next generation text services) uses an even more recent version.

Si

Since I switched to Mac in August, one of the things I've really missed is the way that Windows renders text. I don't expect Postscript fonts to render super crisp on screen, but I do Truetype fonts, and to me, on OSX, all fonts look like they're Postscript by the way they render.

Text on windows is just so much clearer, and with Cleartype enabled it's just so much more pleasing aesthetically. Apple should licence the rendering tech MS uses for Windows because it is just far superior.

And what's the deal with the different AA modes in OSX? Maybe it's me but I can't see any difference in the way text looks with them.

I tried the Power Toy today, I managed to get it a little better after that tweaking, not much.

The font used for this was Lucida Unicode (funny name, but yes) and the 'reading mode' in Word basically just gets the menu items out of the way so they don't disturb you while reading. I couldn't see any difference in rendering. The display is set to the recommended setting (too many pixels on too small display) the display must be RGB since the BGR setting in your Power Toy looked worse. Also I must say, I found it rather interesting that an external web document can make system level settings.

I'm just happy that this Dell is not MY machine and I only need to get my eyes hurt occasionally.

Aesthetically pleasing? I don't know, the letter-forms just loose too much of their genuine shape.

> MS ClearType antialias is far superior to osX font antialias.

Agreed.
(BTW, Frank is way biased on this. :-)

> If you're seeing rainbow fringes, ClearType could be configured incorrectly.

I don't know what "rainbow" means here, but it's pretty "clear" that color fringing is part of CT.

> ClearType itself has also been improved

Yes but there's still a -newly spawned- ideological issue at MS (namely the over-reliance on automation, something the PostScript boys were the ones to have always been guilty of) which I fear is a real barrier to reaching the very pinnacle of quality.

hhp

> don't know what "rainbow" means here, but it's pretty "clear" that color fringing is part of CT.

Sorry, bad word choice. I meant if the color fringing is noticeable.