4 ms·

Well, for starters, anti-aliased text?

by jmgao 5y ago

badsectoracula 5y ago
Not everyone likes that, personally i always disable antialiasing. Even on Windows 10 i use a registry setting (since Microsoft thought it wise to hide the UI option) to disable text antialiasing since i prefer the sharp text. Sadly many fonts nowadays do not have hinting information at all, but at least so far Firefox, etc allow me to override sites' font choices with fonts that look good with my setup.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Anti-aliasing looks great on a screen with high enough DPI so you can barely see the pixels. On a low-DPI screen it does look fuzzy. On my 4K 24" turning anti-aliasing off makes it look less crisp though because the letters don't look just right.
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    Yeah, maybe. I do not have a very high DPI monitor and TBH i find even my 27" 1440p monitor to be too high DPI for my taste, i just couldn't find something smaller with the other specs i wanted (VA for having decent blacks and with a high refresh rate). I'll probably replace it with a ~23" 1080p monitor at some point though if i find a VA with high refresh rate... and not be curved (because for some reason 99% of them are curved). Either way i'll stick with the non-antialiased fonts :-P.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Well I would find 27" 1440p too high DPI too if I ran it at 100% scaling :) I run my 24" 4K at 200% scaling so it's effectively 1080p. Just super crisp which I like. We have super-crisp screens on our phones these days, why not on the computer?
      - badsectoracula 5y ago
        There are too many micro-issues with high DPI and TBH while the text is sharper i do not see the benefit for everything else while they do add additional strain on the CPU and the GPU (especially for games), so i just avoid it. Some time ago I tried 150% scaling on my laptop (which has a 1080p monitor at a small size) and i just reverted to 100% because a lot of things, from websites to applications, etc didn't work properly. Note that this was on Windows but i do not expect things to be better in other OSes anyway (except perhaps macOS but it has a ton of other much worse drawbacks IMO). Perhaps if all i used was terminal apps and pure text editors i'd have a different opinion but i use a lot of GUI apps with images, games, etc.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        I don't know, but seems like you're bending over backwards to explain that CDE's weaker rendering is a good thing. Maybe it suits you, but I think it's a clear fact that the reason it's weaker is because they haven't developed it, not because they were able to but made a conscious decision not to. If CDE could render better but let you opt out that'd be great... but it can't render more accurately in the first place. It's not choosing to be worse.
        badsectoracula 5y ago
        > seems like you're bending over backwards to explain that CDE's weaker rendering is a good thing You'd be wrong. What i write isn't about CDE but about antialiased text. As i wrote a few parent posts above i even have antialiased text disabled on Windows 10 via a registry setting and Windows can certainly do antialiased text rendering. > If CDE could render better but let you opt out that'd be great... but it can't render more accurately in the first place. It's not choosing to be worse. CDE can do antialiased text rendering, or more precisely Motif can (CDE doesn't render its own fonts) if configured to do so via Xft which uses FreeType for font rasterization - the same library that other toolkits (e.g. Qt) use. So its font rasterization can be as good as other toolkits. You need to do it via X resources and is opt-in instead of opt-out. And besides i do not even use CDE myself, last time i used it was years ago out of curiosity. Personally on Linux i prefer Window Maker (which can also optionally use Xft for antialiased text rendering).

Well, for starters, anti-aliased text?

by jmgao 5y ago

Well, for starters, anti-aliased text?

Not everyone likes that, personally i always disable antialiasing. Even on Windows 10 i use a registry setting (since Microsoft thought it wise to hide the UI option) to disable text antialiasing since i prefer the sharp text. Sadly many fonts nowadays do not have hinting information at all, but at least so far Firefox, etc allow me to override sites' font choices with fonts that look good with my setup.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Anti-aliasing looks great on a screen with high enough DPI so you can barely see the pixels. On a low-DPI screen it does look fuzzy. On my 4K 24" turning anti-aliasing off makes it look less crisp though because the letters don't look just right.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  Yeah, maybe. I do not have a very high DPI monitor and TBH i find even my 27" 1440p monitor to be too high DPI for my taste, i just couldn't find something smaller with the other specs i wanted (VA for having decent blacks and with a high refresh rate). I'll probably replace it with a ~23" 1080p monitor at some point though if i find a VA with high refresh rate... and not be curved (because for some reason 99% of them are curved). Either way i'll stick with the non-antialiased fonts :-P.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Well I would find 27" 1440p too high DPI too if I ran it at 100% scaling :) I run my 24" 4K at 200% scaling so it's effectively 1080p. Just super crisp which I like. We have super-crisp screens on our phones these days, why not on the computer?
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      There are too many micro-issues with high DPI and TBH while the text is sharper i do not see the benefit for everything else while they do add additional strain on the CPU and the GPU (especially for games), so i just avoid it. Some time ago I tried 150% scaling on my laptop (which has a 1080p monitor at a small size) and i just reverted to 100% because a lot of things, from websites to applications, etc didn't work properly. Note that this was on Windows but i do not expect things to be better in other OSes anyway (except perhaps macOS but it has a ton of other much worse drawbacks IMO). Perhaps if all i used was terminal apps and pure text editors i'd have a different opinion but i use a lot of GUI apps with images, games, etc.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        I don't know, but seems like you're bending over backwards to explain that CDE's weaker rendering is a good thing. Maybe it suits you, but I think it's a clear fact that the reason it's weaker is because they haven't developed it, not because they were able to but made a conscious decision not to. If CDE could render better but let you opt out that'd be great... but it can't render more accurately in the first place. It's not choosing to be worse.
        badsectoracula 5y ago
        > seems like you're bending over backwards to explain that CDE's weaker rendering is a good thing You'd be wrong. What i write isn't about CDE but about antialiased text. As i wrote a few parent posts above i even have antialiased text disabled on Windows 10 via a registry setting and Windows can certainly do antialiased text rendering. > If CDE could render better but let you opt out that'd be great... but it can't render more accurately in the first place. It's not choosing to be worse. CDE can do antialiased text rendering, or more precisely Motif can (CDE doesn't render its own fonts) if configured to do so via Xft which uses FreeType for font rasterization - the same library that other toolkits (e.g. Qt) use. So its font rasterization can be as good as other toolkits. You need to do it via X resources and is opt-in instead of opt-out. And besides i do not even use CDE myself, last time i used it was years ago out of curiosity. Personally on Linux i prefer Window Maker (which can also optionally use Xft for antialiased text rendering).