4 ms·

Proves even further to me that Terminus is superior.

by jryan49 11y ago

VLM 11y ago
I agree with you, although I suspect many people confuse the clarity of Terminus with AA being forced off because its a bitmap font. They really want a non-AA display, and Terminus being bitmap forces the issue. If you just shut off AA there are some fonts almost, but not quite, as good as Terminus. Non-AA Ubuntu Mono is almost as good as Terminus. Non-AA Source Code Pro is almost as nice as Terminus. Dejavu Sans Mono is almost as good as Terminus. The clarity and consistency of Terminus never fails to impress me. Other fonts have like 25 good glyphs and at least one "whoops" usually a M or W or E. Think of Monoid or the sad M in otherwise good Ubuntu Mono. Then again Ubuntu mono is definable as a Terminus clone with a broken M. Or sometimes none of the glyphs are individual disasters but the whole font has crazy variations, think of the Meslos some verticals are double width very strange looking, unreadable, looks like old fashioned ransom note. I used an OCR font for awhile a couple years ago. Its not bad once you get used to it. An ugly yet productive duckling. Easy to read does not necessarily equal beautiful (with the exception of Terminus). I have a suspicion that Terminus and buckling spring / model-M keyboard use correlate, as a "will not accept anything but the absolute best" attitude.
- jryan49 11y ago
  You're right. I have AA turned off on my machine, and use fonts that just look good without it.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  I've never understood why some people dislike antialiased text rendering so much. Aliased text is obviously inferior to my eyes - all the spurious 90-degree angles add meaningless noise to the character forms, as though the font is decorated with a lot of extra fuzz. Antialiasing smooths all this cruft away, leaving the character shape more clearly defined. And yet there are people who dislike this look enough to disable it and work around it, describing it as "blurry", though my experience is that it's less blurry. I really wonder what it is about their experience which differs so greatly from mine.
  - to3m 11y ago
    With AA text on a normal-DPI LCD screen, it never feels like I'm focussed on the screen properly. With no hard edges and no sharp corners, my eyes can't seem to find the right setting. Whatever I do, it just always feels slightly wrong. Blurry edges just don't make me think that something is smooth - they make me think I haven't focussed properly. Drives me nuts. I wouldn't mind so much, but over time people seem to keep taking the option of a pixelly display away, and when anybody complains, they're told they don't know what they're seeing through their own eyes. Fortunately, AA text + retina display, I like, because the pixels are too small for the blurriness to be visible, and things look sharp again. So roll on more of that please. (High-DPI, I mean. Not AA. We have more than enough AA to be getting on with.)
    - marssaxman 11y ago
      Interesting. Thanks for sharing. High-DPI displays are clearly the right long term solution. It was amazing to use one for the first time - I couldn't see the individual pixels anymore, and it was disconcerting in a really good way. It's like a bit of Hollywood fakery brought to life.

Proves even further to me that Terminus is superior.

by jryan49 11y ago

Proves even further to me that Terminus is superior.

VLM 11y ago

I agree with you, although I suspect many people confuse the clarity of Terminus with AA being forced off because its a bitmap font. They really want a non-AA display, and Terminus being bitmap forces the issue. If you just shut off AA there are some fonts almost, but not quite, as good as Terminus. Non-AA Ubuntu Mono is almost as good as Terminus. Non-AA Source Code Pro is almost as nice as Terminus. Dejavu Sans Mono is almost as good as Terminus. The clarity and consistency of Terminus never fails to impress me. Other fonts have like 25 good glyphs and at least one "whoops" usually a M or W or E. Think of Monoid or the sad M in otherwise good Ubuntu Mono. Then again Ubuntu mono is definable as a Terminus clone with a broken M. Or sometimes none of the glyphs are individual disasters but the whole font has crazy variations, think of the Meslos some verticals are double width very strange looking, unreadable, looks like old fashioned ransom note. I used an OCR font for awhile a couple years ago. Its not bad once you get used to it. An ugly yet productive duckling. Easy to read does not necessarily equal beautiful (with the exception of Terminus). I have a suspicion that Terminus and buckling spring / model-M keyboard use correlate, as a "will not accept anything but the absolute best" attitude.

jryan49 11y ago
You're right. I have AA turned off on my machine, and use fonts that just look good without it.
marssaxman 11y ago
I've never understood why some people dislike antialiased text rendering so much. Aliased text is obviously inferior to my eyes - all the spurious 90-degree angles add meaningless noise to the character forms, as though the font is decorated with a lot of extra fuzz. Antialiasing smooths all this cruft away, leaving the character shape more clearly defined. And yet there are people who dislike this look enough to disable it and work around it, describing it as "blurry", though my experience is that it's less blurry. I really wonder what it is about their experience which differs so greatly from mine.
- to3m 11y ago
  With AA text on a normal-DPI LCD screen, it never feels like I'm focussed on the screen properly. With no hard edges and no sharp corners, my eyes can't seem to find the right setting. Whatever I do, it just always feels slightly wrong. Blurry edges just don't make me think that something is smooth - they make me think I haven't focussed properly. Drives me nuts. I wouldn't mind so much, but over time people seem to keep taking the option of a pixelly display away, and when anybody complains, they're told they don't know what they're seeing through their own eyes. Fortunately, AA text + retina display, I like, because the pixels are too small for the blurriness to be visible, and things look sharp again. So roll on more of that please. (High-DPI, I mean. Not AA. We have more than enough AA to be getting on with.)
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    Interesting. Thanks for sharing. High-DPI displays are clearly the right long term solution. It was amazing to use one for the first time - I couldn't see the individual pixels anymore, and it was disconcerting in a really good way. It's like a bit of Hollywood fakery brought to life.