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For an example of how much people care, look up all the outrage that happened when Chrome switched between two very similar Windows font renderers (GDI and Dire

by rossy 9y ago

For an example of how much people care, look up all the outrage that happened when Chrome switched between two very similar Windows font renderers (GDI and DirectWrite.) Example: https://www.change.org/p/google-inc-bring-sharp-fonts-back-in-google-chrome-disable-directwrite https://www.change.org/p/google-inc-bring-sharp-fonts-back-i... If anecdotal evidence counts, I've heard lots complaints about font rendering, even from people in real life and non-technical people. (I like the fonts on X. Why does Y look so bad? Why can't it just look like it does in Word on Windows?) It turns out that if people spend most of their lives/jobs looking at text that appears a certain way, they will get accustomed to it. If these people are using LoDPI monitors where they can perceive each individual pixel, you'd better hope your custom font renderer replicates your users' favourite renderer down to the exact pixel layout of each glyph.

pcwalton 9y ago
I don't think you need to be accurate to the pixel level, unless you're targeting bilevel (black and white) rendering. (This is empirical: nobody who I've tested my custom font renderer with has been able to tell the difference between it and the OS renderer, once the same features are enabled.) But you do need to do everything that the OS does: gamma correction, TrueType hinting, subpixel AA, autohinting, stem darkening…
- rossy 9y ago
  Yeah, that's fair. I think there's a "Windows XP" preset for Infinality-patched FreeType and it gets pretty close to what Windows does. Its rendering of 9pt Segoe UI is near identical to Windows', except for slightly softer font smoothing, but this doesn't seem to be annoying for Windows users (it's probably less than the difference between GDI and DirectWrite.) I heard of this because a friend switched from Windows to GNOME 3 a little while ago and told me about the Infinality preset. He seemed to be very happy with it.

by rossy 9y ago

pcwalton 9y ago

I don't think you need to be accurate to the pixel level, unless you're targeting bilevel (black and white) rendering. (This is empirical: nobody who I've tested my custom font renderer with has been able to tell the difference between it and the OS renderer, once the same features are enabled.) But you do need to do everything that the OS does: gamma correction, TrueType hinting, subpixel AA, autohinting, stem darkening…

rossy 9y ago
Yeah, that's fair. I think there's a "Windows XP" preset for Infinality-patched FreeType and it gets pretty close to what Windows does. Its rendering of 9pt Segoe UI is near identical to Windows', except for slightly softer font smoothing, but this doesn't seem to be annoying for Windows users (it's probably less than the difference between GDI and DirectWrite.) I heard of this because a friend switched from Windows to GNOME 3 a little while ago and told me about the Infinality preset. He seemed to be very happy with it.