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Note that for (1), you're going to have to explain your logic there, because retina displays still need subpixel rendering. They're nowhere near the print indus

Note that for (1), you're going to have to explain your logic there, because retina displays still need subpixel rendering. They're nowhere near the print industry's standard 300 dpi, they're (a little less than) 300 ppi. For a "three different colours arranged in in blocks of four" screen, you'd need closer to 1200ppi before "we don't need subpixel rendering" is actually true. Until then, the raster tragedy may become less noticeable to people who are used to reading simplistic orthographies (like English), but it's very much still there for more complex orthographies (like, say, almost every middle-eastern, asian, and east-asian orthography)

tayistay 3y ago
Was just quoting the author. But also it appears that Apple disagrees with you, since they seem to have turned off sub pixel AA five years ago in macOS Mojave. See [1]. Indeed when I screen-captured and scaled up the non-western script in the article, there was no sub pixel AA on my Mac. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/8wpk18/macos_mojave_nukes_subpixel_antialiasing_making/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/8wpk18/macos_mojave_...
bluquark 3y ago
Well, "need" is subjective. But subpixel rendering has diminishing returns as DPI goes up and (as the article describes) it causes several performance and interoperability problems, so the appropriate DPI threshold to turn it off might reasonably be somewhere lower than parity with print. Everyone agrees it's a good idea on cheap low-dpi displays, but whether it's still worth the costs on so-called "retina" displays is a judgment call.
Jasper_ 3y ago
Grayscale AA is still common on Retina screens, but subpixel AA is rare. Mostly because subpixel AA is difficult to do compositing with transparency with, but also because it's less necessary on Retina screens. The tradeoffs are just to the point that it's not considered worth it.

tayistay 3y ago

Was just quoting the author. But also it appears that Apple disagrees with you, since they seem to have turned off sub pixel AA five years ago in macOS Mojave. See [1]. Indeed when I screen-captured and scaled up the non-western script in the article, there was no sub pixel AA on my Mac. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/8wpk18/macos_mojave_nukes_subpixel_antialiasing_making/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/8wpk18/macos_mojave_...

bluquark 3y ago

Well, "need" is subjective. But subpixel rendering has diminishing returns as DPI goes up and (as the article describes) it causes several performance and interoperability problems, so the appropriate DPI threshold to turn it off might reasonably be somewhere lower than parity with print. Everyone agrees it's a good idea on cheap low-dpi displays, but whether it's still worth the costs on so-called "retina" displays is a judgment call.

Jasper_ 3y ago

Grayscale AA is still common on Retina screens, but subpixel AA is rare. Mostly because subpixel AA is difficult to do compositing with transparency with, but also because it's less necessary on Retina screens. The tradeoffs are just to the point that it's not considered worth it.