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It's a bit sad to see such a beautiful bitmaps blurred to death by clueless "antialiasing". Doesn't anybody appreciate clean bitmap fonts anymore? I feel lik

It's a bit sad to see such a beautiful bitmaps blurred to death by clueless "antialiasing". Doesn't anybody appreciate clean bitmap fonts anymore? I feel like an old man yelling at passerby.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago
You can't properly appreciate them unless viewed on a CRT with it's softened edges, visible scan lines, bloom, and glow.
arexxbifs 6y ago
Font smoothing in general is pretty bad but in Linux it's abysmal. I use bitmap fonts as much as possible and I turn AA off for all fonts below a certain size (18 px IIRC). I also force Firefox to exclusively use Arial because of the excellent hinting. Things are so much more legible and crisp it's not even funny. (Edit: Funny thing is, I remember font smoothing as much better in general maybe 10-15 years ago. Perhaps it was just the novelty that appealed to me then.)
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  I've found the font rendering to be very good indeed ever since the Truetype2 patent expired, so the proper byte-code interpreter could be enabled in Freetype and the autohinter disabled. I find the rendering on Linux (KDE Neon and openSUSE for me) to be vastly superior to Windows 10. It was already very good on my old 27" ~108ppi display, but it's even better now that I have a 4K display that's ~163ppi, which I run at 150% scale. Crisp shapes, no blurring at all. It's all at default settings, subpixel rendering on and slight hinting.
  - gombosg 6y ago
    > the proper byte-code interpreter could be enabled in Freetype and the autohinter disabled Can you point me to some docs about how this can be done?
    - KozmoNau7 6y ago
      The patents expired in 2010, and it should be enabled by default starting from Freetype 2.4. Microsofts patents on ClearType color filtering expired in 2019, but I don't know if that has led to any further improvements in Freetype. https://freetype.org/patents.html https://freetype.org/patents.html Make sure you don't have this in your fontconfig: <match target="font"> <edit name="autohint" mode="assign"> <bool>true</bool> </edit> </match> As the autohinter is garbage.
  - arexxbifs 6y ago
    I'm running 1080p on a 23" screen (96 ppi) and I find Windows font rendering to be much better compared to Linux/Freetype on the same screen. Freetype suffers from intense blurring, colour bleed in subpixel smoothing and variable thicknesses both within glyphs and between two supposedly identical glyphs rendered next to each other.
rbanffy 6y ago
Unless the bitmap font lines up with the pixels on the screen, the results are always terrible. They work well on CRTs because CRTs artifact away the pixels and blend them into round-edged horizontal lines. For high-dpi screens it's hopeless, as the pixels are invisible to the naked eye from a reasonable working distance.
- amelius 6y ago
  Ok, how do we fix it?
  - enriquto 6y ago
    Just use bitmap fonts as they are intended to be used, without antialiasing. They are beautiful.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      I need a microscope to see a 5x7 font on my MBP screen.
      - enriquto 6y ago
        Then use a larger font, duh
        rbanffy 6y ago
        In order to be visible on the MBP screen, it'll require a humongous bitmap. And the pixels will still be invisible to the naked eye. It'll make no difference. Pixel-perfect fonts are great when you have 8-16 scanlines to define a character. It hasn't been like that for decades.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    You can apply a filter on top of a raw bitmap the same way programs like Cathode or Cool Retro Term do. This way you have CRT-like pseudopixels being rendered at the high resolution of native panel. I used Cool Retro Term on Linux as my terminal in full screen when debugging stuff because the task was so boring that using an interesting terminal made it bearable.
indymike 6y ago
On low pixel density screens, pixel perfect bitmap fonts are great. On high pixel density screens, it works the opposite way: antialiasing looks fine, and scaled up bitmaps look bad.
TacticalCoder 6y ago
I fully agree. It's really sad. I don't have a high DPI screen (just a 38" doing 3840x1600, but using a "regular" pixel-size, not a retina display) and I'm using a "pixel perfect" font for coding, no AA (a modified version Terminus I made myself, with inspiration from the Monaco font for some glyphs). You're not alone but we are a dying breed.
- bbbobbb 6y ago
  Is your modified version public? I terminus font but somehow it seems very thin and hard to read at slightly larger sizes..

It's a bit sad to see such a beautiful bitmaps blurred to death by clueless "antialiasing". Doesn't anybody appreciate clean bitmap fonts anymore? I feel like an old man yelling at passerby.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

You can't properly appreciate them unless viewed on a CRT with it's softened edges, visible scan lines, bloom, and glow.

arexxbifs 6y ago

Font smoothing in general is pretty bad but in Linux it's abysmal. I use bitmap fonts as much as possible and I turn AA off for all fonts below a certain size (18 px IIRC). I also force Firefox to exclusively use Arial because of the excellent hinting. Things are so much more legible and crisp it's not even funny. (Edit: Funny thing is, I remember font smoothing as much better in general maybe 10-15 years ago. Perhaps it was just the novelty that appealed to me then.)

KozmoNau7 6y ago
I've found the font rendering to be very good indeed ever since the Truetype2 patent expired, so the proper byte-code interpreter could be enabled in Freetype and the autohinter disabled. I find the rendering on Linux (KDE Neon and openSUSE for me) to be vastly superior to Windows 10. It was already very good on my old 27" ~108ppi display, but it's even better now that I have a 4K display that's ~163ppi, which I run at 150% scale. Crisp shapes, no blurring at all. It's all at default settings, subpixel rendering on and slight hinting.
- gombosg 6y ago
  > the proper byte-code interpreter could be enabled in Freetype and the autohinter disabled Can you point me to some docs about how this can be done?
  - KozmoNau7 6y ago
    The patents expired in 2010, and it should be enabled by default starting from Freetype 2.4. Microsofts patents on ClearType color filtering expired in 2019, but I don't know if that has led to any further improvements in Freetype. https://freetype.org/patents.html https://freetype.org/patents.html Make sure you don't have this in your fontconfig: <match target="font"> <edit name="autohint" mode="assign"> <bool>true</bool> </edit> </match> As the autohinter is garbage.
- arexxbifs 6y ago
  I'm running 1080p on a 23" screen (96 ppi) and I find Windows font rendering to be much better compared to Linux/Freetype on the same screen. Freetype suffers from intense blurring, colour bleed in subpixel smoothing and variable thicknesses both within glyphs and between two supposedly identical glyphs rendered next to each other.

rbanffy 6y ago

Unless the bitmap font lines up with the pixels on the screen, the results are always terrible. They work well on CRTs because CRTs artifact away the pixels and blend them into round-edged horizontal lines. For high-dpi screens it's hopeless, as the pixels are invisible to the naked eye from a reasonable working distance.

amelius 6y ago
Ok, how do we fix it?
- enriquto 6y ago
  Just use bitmap fonts as they are intended to be used, without antialiasing. They are beautiful.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    I need a microscope to see a 5x7 font on my MBP screen.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      Then use a larger font, duh
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        In order to be visible on the MBP screen, it'll require a humongous bitmap. And the pixels will still be invisible to the naked eye. It'll make no difference. Pixel-perfect fonts are great when you have 8-16 scanlines to define a character. It hasn't been like that for decades.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  You can apply a filter on top of a raw bitmap the same way programs like Cathode or Cool Retro Term do. This way you have CRT-like pseudopixels being rendered at the high resolution of native panel. I used Cool Retro Term on Linux as my terminal in full screen when debugging stuff because the task was so boring that using an interesting terminal made it bearable.

indymike 6y ago

On low pixel density screens, pixel perfect bitmap fonts are great. On high pixel density screens, it works the opposite way: antialiasing looks fine, and scaled up bitmaps look bad.

TacticalCoder 6y ago

I fully agree. It's really sad. I don't have a high DPI screen (just a 38" doing 3840x1600, but using a "regular" pixel-size, not a retina display) and I'm using a "pixel perfect" font for coding, no AA (a modified version Terminus I made myself, with inspiration from the Monaco font for some glyphs). You're not alone but we are a dying breed.

bbbobbb 6y ago
Is your modified version public? I terminus font but somehow it seems very thin and hard to read at slightly larger sizes..