8 ms·

Google and Adobe team up to improve fonts on iOS and Linux

98 points by microwise 13y ago

joosters 13y ago
The article's font sample image is pretty shoddy. They've resized it and so lost all the features of the renderer! To my eyes, the top example seems clearer and sharper than the bottom one. The original image is found at http://google-opensource.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/got-cff.html http://google-opensource.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/got-cff.htm... and is much better.
- mpyne 13y ago
  I'm glad you linked that because the second example, not shown at the ZDNet article, is actually a much better demonstration of improvement IMO.
- xfs 13y ago
  Adobe's post http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2013/05/adobe-contributes-cff-rasterizer-to-freetype.html http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2013/05/adobe-contribute...
- sp332 13y ago
  The "responsive" design of the page might shrink the image down if your window is too narrow. Here's a direct link to the image on the page: http://cdn-static.zdnet.com/i/r/story/70/00/014803/freetype-cff-601x443.png?hash=ZwV4AmSvMz&upscale=1 http://cdn-static.zdnet.com/i/r/story/70/00/014803/freetype-... which looks fine, I think.
joosters 13y ago
Is it true that iOS uses a different font renderer than Mac OS? I thought that the fonts on an iPhone looked pretty good actually. Perhaps they are referring to apps that decide to use the FreeType renderer?
- happy_dino 13y ago
  > Is it true that iOS uses a different font renderer than Mac OS? Yes, iOS uses (parts of) FreeType. Imagine the shitstorm if they shipped their fuzzy, washed-out default rendering! The issue is that most people buying smartphones are not die-hard Apple fans like the buyers of their other offerings, so the font rentering would be pretty hard to sell. > I thought that the fonts on an iPhone looked pretty good actually. That's because FreeType (with the right patches and settings) is already pretty much the best font renderer (with a few exceptions).
  - wereHamster 13y ago
    But finding the right patches and settings is hard.
    - happy_dino 13y ago
      The good thing is that it only has to be figured out once, then the information can be spread almost freely ... there is something called “the internet” which excels at this.
      - wereHamster 13y ago
        "the internet" also excels at spreading misinformation or retaining information that once was correct but no longer is for extended periods of time.
    - gillianseed 13y ago
      Doesn't Ubuntu and other out-of-the-box desktop friendly distros come with good font settings from the get go? I use Arch Linux but even here it's not much of a hassle given that there is a very informative wiki page not to mention packages with good configuration presets (infinality).
      - happy_dino 13y ago
        > Doesn't Ubuntu and other out-of-the-box desktop friendly distros come with good font settings from the get go? Yes, exactly!
thristian 13y ago
So, does this mean that text on web-pages is going to have inconsistent rasterisation depending on whether the font happens to represent its glyphs with TrueType, PostScript, or CFF outlines?
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  This is not any different than today (in terms of this problem) as far as I can tell. One part of creating the whole system is creating a unified font catalog in one font format.
koshak 13y ago
so, does it mean freetype and fontconfig will render fonts pretty well without patching them with infinality for example?
chrismorgan 13y ago
Seriously? Ubuntu has the best font rendering of any operating system that I've used. Mac OS X is perfectly good, but it doesn't tend to feel as nice as Ubuntu. Especially when you get to things like Indic scripts. Windows' font rendering (I can only speak for up to Windows 7) is still quite nasty, especially at larger font sizes. The lack of vertical antialiasing ruins it for these cases.
- ekr 13y ago
  The article is about an upgrade to the Freetype library, more specifically to the CFF rasterizer. It has nothing to do with TrueType fonts (most of them, probably). I've been using Arch Linux as my only OS for more than 5 years, and the only certain applications have given me font-related trouble. Firefox somehow doesn't select the correct alternative (even though fontconfig works fine).
- gjulianm 13y ago
  Although I haven't tried 13.04 yet, Qt apps on Ubuntu weren't that great on font rendering. There's room for improvement there. Also, take into account that Linux is not Ubuntu. It's a growing trend to identify Linux with Ubuntu, as if other distributions (or even other desktop environments in the same Ubuntu distro) weren't to take into account. Have you seen KDE font rendering? Open a Chromium browser, navigate to some pages, it's awful.
  - kijin 13y ago
    Even among the Ubuntu variants, font rendering is only smooth in GTK-based desktop environments, i.e. GNOME/Unity and XFCE. Last time I checked, fonts looked awful in Kubuntu, especially if you opened either Firefox or LibreOffice. Lubuntu likewise looks like it received none of the font rendering improvements that Ubuntu has had by default for ages. Of course, "awful" is subjective so you might prefer the way KDE and LXDE render fonts. But it doesn't change the fact that they're different.
    - blinkingled 13y ago
      You can make the fonts looks equally good in Kubuntu by doing this - http://askubuntu.com/questions/130758/how-to-configure-kubuntu-fonts-to-look-line-ones-used-in-unity-ubuntu-12-04 http://askubuntu.com/questions/130758/how-to-configure-kubun... and changing the Desktop Effect -> Scaling Method to Crisp.
kmfrk 13y ago
You can support the development and maintenance of this project by donating here: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/18808 http://pledgie.com/campaigns/18808.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
dangerlibrary 13y ago
The rendering of curved lines appears much better, but vertical and horizontal lines are very poorly rendered. You can see this clearly in the Chinese character "中" - the first character inside the parentheses on the first line.
neovive 13y ago
I hope this brings more consistency to font rendering across OS environments. That would be a great accomplishment and wonderful for web designers!
codex 13y ago
It's been my experience that Ubuntu's default font rendering is good--but this seems to be because Ubuntu is using fonts which have been explicitly designed to render well in the Linux font stack. I find that using mainstream TTF and OTF fonts, with their custom hinting and ligatures, works less well. Soon this will be a non-issue, though. Font engines differ only in how they hint and subpixel render at low resolutions. Once every display is "retina," there will be very little difference, except perhaps in gamma correction, advanced kerning and layout algorithms, where I've found OS X has always produced superior results.
- jmhain 13y ago
  I really don't know much about font rendering, but I thought that was the case too so I installed the Ubuntu fonts on my Arch Linux system, and they looked terrible. According to the Arch wiki, Ubuntu applies their own patches and "extra configurations" for freetype2, cairo, etc. I was able to achieve a similar, but not quite as pleasing result by installing freetype2-infinality on Arch.
wfunction 13y ago
Is it just me who finds all of them horrible?
manicbovine 13y ago
A good start would be to replace fontconfig and its ridiculous XML files.
drivebyacct2 13y ago
Anyone want to host a PPA for Raring with the patched freetype?
codex 13y ago
Now that font rendering technology on displays has reached that of print thanks to "retina" class displays, how can we improve readability even further? We're no longer constrained by the limitations of the printing press. What if every vowel in a word were rendered in light grey, and every consonant in black? Or every letter were mapped to one of n subtle (near black) color hues? Or both? Such crazy schemes might further improve word recognition and reduce load on the visual cortex. Perhaps the Kindle, Readability, or iBooks could implement something like this as an experiment. I'd definitely try it.
jamesaguilar 13y ago
I would love to try this out and even went to the distance of downloading the tarball for the beta of '.12. However, it's not clear where the property needs to be set, as there are a few places in the library where FT_Init... is called. On top of that, I am not sure from re-reading this that it helps at all for TT fonts, which is most of what I end up using.
edandersen 13y ago
How about Google spend some time fixing font rendering in Chrome on Windows? Firefox has nailed it but Chrome hasn't. Some web fonts are unreadable.

98 points by microwise 13y ago

The article's font sample image is pretty shoddy. They've resized it and so lost all the features of the renderer! To my eyes, the top example seems clearer and sharper than the bottom one. The original image is found at http://google-opensource.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/got-cff.html http://google-opensource.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/got-cff.htm... and is much better.

mpyne 13y ago
I'm glad you linked that because the second example, not shown at the ZDNet article, is actually a much better demonstration of improvement IMO.
xfs 13y ago
Adobe's post http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2013/05/adobe-contributes-cff-rasterizer-to-freetype.html http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2013/05/adobe-contribute...
sp332 13y ago
The "responsive" design of the page might shrink the image down if your window is too narrow. Here's a direct link to the image on the page: http://cdn-static.zdnet.com/i/r/story/70/00/014803/freetype-cff-601x443.png?hash=ZwV4AmSvMz&upscale=1 http://cdn-static.zdnet.com/i/r/story/70/00/014803/freetype-... which looks fine, I think.

joosters 13y ago

Is it true that iOS uses a different font renderer than Mac OS? I thought that the fonts on an iPhone looked pretty good actually. Perhaps they are referring to apps that decide to use the FreeType renderer?

happy_dino 13y ago
> Is it true that iOS uses a different font renderer than Mac OS? Yes, iOS uses (parts of) FreeType. Imagine the shitstorm if they shipped their fuzzy, washed-out default rendering! The issue is that most people buying smartphones are not die-hard Apple fans like the buyers of their other offerings, so the font rentering would be pretty hard to sell. > I thought that the fonts on an iPhone looked pretty good actually. That's because FreeType (with the right patches and settings) is already pretty much the best font renderer (with a few exceptions).
- wereHamster 13y ago
  But finding the right patches and settings is hard.
  - happy_dino 13y ago
    The good thing is that it only has to be figured out once, then the information can be spread almost freely ... there is something called “the internet” which excels at this.
    - wereHamster 13y ago
      "the internet" also excels at spreading misinformation or retaining information that once was correct but no longer is for extended periods of time.
  - gillianseed 13y ago
    Doesn't Ubuntu and other out-of-the-box desktop friendly distros come with good font settings from the get go? I use Arch Linux but even here it's not much of a hassle given that there is a very informative wiki page not to mention packages with good configuration presets (infinality).
    - happy_dino 13y ago
      > Doesn't Ubuntu and other out-of-the-box desktop friendly distros come with good font settings from the get go? Yes, exactly!

thristian 13y ago

So, does this mean that text on web-pages is going to have inconsistent rasterisation depending on whether the font happens to represent its glyphs with TrueType, PostScript, or CFF outlines?

ChuckMcM 13y ago
This is not any different than today (in terms of this problem) as far as I can tell. One part of creating the whole system is creating a unified font catalog in one font format.

koshak 13y ago

so, does it mean freetype and fontconfig will render fonts pretty well without patching them with infinality for example?

chrismorgan 13y ago

Seriously? Ubuntu has the best font rendering of any operating system that I've used. Mac OS X is perfectly good, but it doesn't tend to feel as nice as Ubuntu. Especially when you get to things like Indic scripts. Windows' font rendering (I can only speak for up to Windows 7) is still quite nasty, especially at larger font sizes. The lack of vertical antialiasing ruins it for these cases.

ekr 13y ago
The article is about an upgrade to the Freetype library, more specifically to the CFF rasterizer. It has nothing to do with TrueType fonts (most of them, probably). I've been using Arch Linux as my only OS for more than 5 years, and the only certain applications have given me font-related trouble. Firefox somehow doesn't select the correct alternative (even though fontconfig works fine).
gjulianm 13y ago
Although I haven't tried 13.04 yet, Qt apps on Ubuntu weren't that great on font rendering. There's room for improvement there. Also, take into account that Linux is not Ubuntu. It's a growing trend to identify Linux with Ubuntu, as if other distributions (or even other desktop environments in the same Ubuntu distro) weren't to take into account. Have you seen KDE font rendering? Open a Chromium browser, navigate to some pages, it's awful.
- kijin 13y ago
  Even among the Ubuntu variants, font rendering is only smooth in GTK-based desktop environments, i.e. GNOME/Unity and XFCE. Last time I checked, fonts looked awful in Kubuntu, especially if you opened either Firefox or LibreOffice. Lubuntu likewise looks like it received none of the font rendering improvements that Ubuntu has had by default for ages. Of course, "awful" is subjective so you might prefer the way KDE and LXDE render fonts. But it doesn't change the fact that they're different.
  - blinkingled 13y ago
    You can make the fonts looks equally good in Kubuntu by doing this - http://askubuntu.com/questions/130758/how-to-configure-kubuntu-fonts-to-look-line-ones-used-in-unity-ubuntu-12-04 http://askubuntu.com/questions/130758/how-to-configure-kubun... and changing the Desktop Effect -> Scaling Method to Crisp.

kmfrk 13y ago

You can support the development and maintenance of this project by donating here: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/18808 http://pledgie.com/campaigns/18808.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

dangerlibrary 13y ago

The rendering of curved lines appears much better, but vertical and horizontal lines are very poorly rendered. You can see this clearly in the Chinese character "中" - the first character inside the parentheses on the first line.

neovive 13y ago

I hope this brings more consistency to font rendering across OS environments. That would be a great accomplishment and wonderful for web designers!

codex 13y ago

It's been my experience that Ubuntu's default font rendering is good--but this seems to be because Ubuntu is using fonts which have been explicitly designed to render well in the Linux font stack. I find that using mainstream TTF and OTF fonts, with their custom hinting and ligatures, works less well. Soon this will be a non-issue, though. Font engines differ only in how they hint and subpixel render at low resolutions. Once every display is "retina," there will be very little difference, except perhaps in gamma correction, advanced kerning and layout algorithms, where I've found OS X has always produced superior results.

jmhain 13y ago
I really don't know much about font rendering, but I thought that was the case too so I installed the Ubuntu fonts on my Arch Linux system, and they looked terrible. According to the Arch wiki, Ubuntu applies their own patches and "extra configurations" for freetype2, cairo, etc. I was able to achieve a similar, but not quite as pleasing result by installing freetype2-infinality on Arch.

wfunction 13y ago

Is it just me who finds all of them horrible?

manicbovine 13y ago

A good start would be to replace fontconfig and its ridiculous XML files.

drivebyacct2 13y ago

Anyone want to host a PPA for Raring with the patched freetype?

codex 13y ago

Now that font rendering technology on displays has reached that of print thanks to "retina" class displays, how can we improve readability even further? We're no longer constrained by the limitations of the printing press. What if every vowel in a word were rendered in light grey, and every consonant in black? Or every letter were mapped to one of n subtle (near black) color hues? Or both? Such crazy schemes might further improve word recognition and reduce load on the visual cortex. Perhaps the Kindle, Readability, or iBooks could implement something like this as an experiment. I'd definitely try it.

jamesaguilar 13y ago

I would love to try this out and even went to the distance of downloading the tarball for the beta of '.12. However, it's not clear where the property needs to be set, as there are a few places in the library where FT_Init... is called. On top of that, I am not sure from re-reading this that it helps at all for TT fonts, which is most of what I end up using.

edandersen 13y ago

How about Google spend some time fixing font rendering in Chrome on Windows? Firefox has nailed it but Chrome hasn't. Some web fonts are unreadable.