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Bitmap fonts (and hinted fonts are automatically generated bitmap fonts) are pixel art, so the Nyquist limit doesn't apply. In pixel art, the pixels are treated
by mrob 5y ago
Bitmap fonts (and hinted fonts are automatically generated bitmap fonts) are pixel art, so the Nyquist limit doesn't apply. In pixel art, the pixels are treated as little squares or rectangles, not band-limited point samples. This means you sacrifice the ability to display arbitrary shapes, but I'm not trying to reproduce printed text so I don't care.
I have perfectly sharp text on a 1080p monitor because I disable antialiasing in ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf and force full hinting.
- zozbot234 5y agoNitpicking, but a pixel is always a point sample, not a little square. The native medium for displaying pixel art is CRT displays, where these point samples are used to control an electron gun that introduces a Gaussian blur, basically the best case for purely analog upsampling (or DAC, rather) of a pixel raster. No little squares in sight, though! What you're talking about is using pixel-perfect control to reach the Nyquist limit, as mentioned in my sibling comment.
- mrob 5y agoPixel art is defined by treating pixels as little squares. There is no single native medium for displaying pixel art. The same techniques were used for games on portable systems with LCD displays. Additionally, there are many examples of printed art using blocky pixels. The Nyquist limit is irrelevant to pixel art, because the Nyquist limit applies only to reconstructing signals from point samples. Using pixel art on a monochrome LCD (no subpixels), I can display signals with maximum frequency limited only by the sharpness of the edges of the little squares.