4 ms·

OK, does anyone actually remember if half of the systems of the 80s really had such perfect font rendering or is this just some emulation 'current version'? Th

by wink 5mo ago

OK, does anyone actually remember if half of the systems of the 80s really had such perfect font rendering or is this just some emulation 'current version'? The first computers I used were 486 with DOS and early Pentiums with Windows 3.11 and nothing looked nearly as nice. Some of those old screenshots look A LOT better than stuff 10 years later that I used (incl MacOS 8 or 9).

WillAdams 5mo ago
Older OSs had pixel fonts, which were carefully hand-crafted --- vector fonts were something which folks dreamed about having, or which were accessed when using incredibly expensive printers. Font rendering on Windows 3.11 was pretty decent, so long as one used the nicer TrueType fonts --- Times New Roman and Arial had man _years_ of hinting effort by Monotype which kicked in at typically screen sizes --- that said, certain apps would still use the older pixel fonts Tms Rmn and Helv (over which Linotype sued for trademark infringement which is part of why Monotype got the contract) as well as the "vector fonts" Roman and Modern which are (one can still access them in Windows 11) stick/plotter fonts like to the Hershey fonts. When I bought my copy of Windows 3.0, I drove almost 100 miles into Richmond to get a copy of Adobe Type Manager 1.0 for Windows.
- masfuerte 5mo ago
  RISC OS (1987) had built-in support for anti-aliased vector fonts, though they aren't shown in the screenshot. The OS was in ROM and had insufficient space for the actual fonts so they needed to be loaded from disk. This was fine if you had a hard disk but a pita with floppies.
  - WillAdams 5mo ago
    Need to find the time to try that out on a Raspberry Pi....
    - lproven 5mo ago
      You really do. It is pretty much a work of art. I have tried to persuade people a few times now. This may amuse. 2022: https://www.theregister.com/software/2022/06/21/risc-os-is-35-but-its-still-kicking/919144 https://www.theregister.com/software/2022/06/21/risc-os-is-3... 2024: https://www.theregister.com/software/2024/05/02/risc-os-open-530-is-here-with-pi-wi-fi-support/307728 https://www.theregister.com/software/2024/05/02/risc-os-open... I wish I could get the senior GNOME team to use RISC OS for a while. It is so very visible that GNOME >= 3.x is a Windows copy with things removed and re-arranged, because that's all anyone on board has seen or knows.
      - WillAdams 5mo ago
        For me, my high-water mark for GUI experience/consistency was using Go Corp.'s PenPoint OS on an NCR-3125 when mobile, and a NeXT Cube (w/ a Wacom ArtZ) when at my desk --- nothing since has been as nice and consistent and reliable.
        lproven 5mo ago
        I believe you. I never touched a real PenPoint device, sadly. I never got to use a real NeXT cube -- they were formidably expensive over on my side of the Atlantic, the price of a _high end_ new car before I could afford a car at all. I own an original copy of NeXTstep with manuals and have run it inside Previous, but it's not the same.
        WillAdams 5mo ago
        Well, the NCR-3125 I was using got donated to the Smithsonian, so there's that.... My Kindle Scribe makes me a little sad every time I use it. Mac OS X of course gets one the underpinnings of NeXTstep, but the UI has gotten kind of weird since 10.6.8 which was the last version I used regularly, making me wish that there was a "No iPad influence" checkbox for the UI. That said, I'm glad to still be able to run Macromedia FreeHand/MX, and of course, modern hardware is just magical in terms of processing power, esp. for 3D.... but the way styluses have been crippled in Windows since Fall Creator's Update makes me a little angry every time I have to toggle stylus behaviour when switching apps (I actually leave the Settings app open) --- at least Firefox has a checkbox for disabling a stylus scrolling....
pjc50 5mo ago
The monitors of the time were a lot blurrier than the screen you're looking at the screenshots on. For maximum verisimilitude you'd have to have photographs of screens. I got an 800x600 LCD monitor in about 1999, and it was a massive upgrade.
- zozbot234 5mo ago
  It's a tradeoff. A 800x600 CRT will look "blurry" compared to a LCD when rendering old-style GUIs or text in a properly hinted font, but the 800x600 LCD will look blocky and pixelated when rendering a real-world photorealistic image compared to the CRT. The real look of that CRT is more like taking that old 800x600 photo and upscaling it to 1440x1080 on a modern FullHD display. Blurry to be sure, but not blocky or pixelated. Early LCDs also had terrible image persistence/ghosting issues that showed up when playing games.
red_admiral 5mo ago
I think the factor here is that the screens were CRTs.
hulitu 5mo ago
Font rendering was better. Today the fonts are scaled up or down or both and the rendering is hit or miss.

by wink 5mo ago

WillAdams 5mo ago

Older OSs had pixel fonts, which were carefully hand-crafted --- vector fonts were something which folks dreamed about having, or which were accessed when using incredibly expensive printers. Font rendering on Windows 3.11 was pretty decent, so long as one used the nicer TrueType fonts --- Times New Roman and Arial had man _years_ of hinting effort by Monotype which kicked in at typically screen sizes --- that said, certain apps would still use the older pixel fonts Tms Rmn and Helv (over which Linotype sued for trademark infringement which is part of why Monotype got the contract) as well as the "vector fonts" Roman and Modern which are (one can still access them in Windows 11) stick/plotter fonts like to the Hershey fonts. When I bought my copy of Windows 3.0, I drove almost 100 miles into Richmond to get a copy of Adobe Type Manager 1.0 for Windows.

masfuerte 5mo ago
RISC OS (1987) had built-in support for anti-aliased vector fonts, though they aren't shown in the screenshot. The OS was in ROM and had insufficient space for the actual fonts so they needed to be loaded from disk. This was fine if you had a hard disk but a pita with floppies.
- WillAdams 5mo ago
  Need to find the time to try that out on a Raspberry Pi....
  - lproven 5mo ago
    You really do. It is pretty much a work of art. I have tried to persuade people a few times now. This may amuse. 2022: https://www.theregister.com/software/2022/06/21/risc-os-is-35-but-its-still-kicking/919144 https://www.theregister.com/software/2022/06/21/risc-os-is-3... 2024: https://www.theregister.com/software/2024/05/02/risc-os-open-530-is-here-with-pi-wi-fi-support/307728 https://www.theregister.com/software/2024/05/02/risc-os-open... I wish I could get the senior GNOME team to use RISC OS for a while. It is so very visible that GNOME >= 3.x is a Windows copy with things removed and re-arranged, because that's all anyone on board has seen or knows.
    - WillAdams 5mo ago
      For me, my high-water mark for GUI experience/consistency was using Go Corp.'s PenPoint OS on an NCR-3125 when mobile, and a NeXT Cube (w/ a Wacom ArtZ) when at my desk --- nothing since has been as nice and consistent and reliable.
      - lproven 5mo ago
        I believe you. I never touched a real PenPoint device, sadly. I never got to use a real NeXT cube -- they were formidably expensive over on my side of the Atlantic, the price of a _high end_ new car before I could afford a car at all. I own an original copy of NeXTstep with manuals and have run it inside Previous, but it's not the same.
        WillAdams 5mo ago
        Well, the NCR-3125 I was using got donated to the Smithsonian, so there's that.... My Kindle Scribe makes me a little sad every time I use it. Mac OS X of course gets one the underpinnings of NeXTstep, but the UI has gotten kind of weird since 10.6.8 which was the last version I used regularly, making me wish that there was a "No iPad influence" checkbox for the UI. That said, I'm glad to still be able to run Macromedia FreeHand/MX, and of course, modern hardware is just magical in terms of processing power, esp. for 3D.... but the way styluses have been crippled in Windows since Fall Creator's Update makes me a little angry every time I have to toggle stylus behaviour when switching apps (I actually leave the Settings app open) --- at least Firefox has a checkbox for disabling a stylus scrolling....

pjc50 5mo ago

The monitors of the time were a lot blurrier than the screen you're looking at the screenshots on. For maximum verisimilitude you'd have to have photographs of screens. I got an 800x600 LCD monitor in about 1999, and it was a massive upgrade.

zozbot234 5mo ago
It's a tradeoff. A 800x600 CRT will look "blurry" compared to a LCD when rendering old-style GUIs or text in a properly hinted font, but the 800x600 LCD will look blocky and pixelated when rendering a real-world photorealistic image compared to the CRT. The real look of that CRT is more like taking that old 800x600 photo and upscaling it to 1440x1080 on a modern FullHD display. Blurry to be sure, but not blocky or pixelated. Early LCDs also had terrible image persistence/ghosting issues that showed up when playing games.

red_admiral 5mo ago

I think the factor here is that the screens were CRTs.

hulitu 5mo ago

Font rendering was better. Today the fonts are scaled up or down or both and the rendering is hit or miss.