Comments on: Font smoothing in Pages: It’s about text transparency http://www.betalogue.com/2006/02/09/font-smoothing-in-pages-more-discussion/ Notes from an unfinished world… Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:29:08 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Tom Gidden : Image resampling for LCD screens http://www.betalogue.com/2006/02/09/font-smoothing-in-pages-more-discussion/comment-page-1/#comment-6495 Tom Gidden : Image resampling for LCD screens Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:11:15 +0000 http://www.betalogue.com/2006/02/09/font-smoothing-in-pages-more-discussion/#comment-6495 [...] My browser of choice, Camino, has a small bug whereby the font smoother sometimes switches back to greyscale mode. The worst part is that it doesn’t always happen across the whole window, but when a rectangle is redrawn (eg. while scrolling). I think it mainly occurs when there’s DHTML magic going on, and I suspect I know why: when the text is part of a layer that may be composited on top of other content, the RGB font smoother is not really able to be used, unless the entire layer stack is prebuffered. This is due to the lack of sensible subpixel transparency when compositing. [Update: Pierre Igot describes a similar problem with Apple’s Pages, and Michael Fortin explains why, and it turns out I was probably right.] [...] [...] My browser of choice, Camino, has a small bug whereby the font smoother sometimes switches back to greyscale mode. The worst part is that it doesn’t always happen across the whole window, but when a rectangle is redrawn (eg. while scrolling). I think it mainly occurs when there’s DHTML magic going on, and I suspect I know why: when the text is part of a layer that may be composited on top of other content, the RGB font smoother is not really able to be used, unless the entire layer stack is prebuffered. This is due to the lack of sensible subpixel transparency when compositing. [Update: Pierre Igot describes a similar problem with Apple’s Pages, and Michael Fortin explains why, and it turns out I was probably right.] [...]

]]> By: Pierre Igot http://www.betalogue.com/2006/02/09/font-smoothing-in-pages-more-discussion/comment-page-1/#comment-3923 Pierre Igot Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:21:38 +0000 http://www.betalogue.com/2006/02/09/font-smoothing-in-pages-more-discussion/#comment-3923 Michel Fortin has now posted a <a href="http://www.michelf.com/weblog/2006/subpixel-antialiasing-achilles-heel/" rel="nofollow">clarification</a> in the comments on his post. I guess what it boils down to is still the issue of whether whatever advantages transparency support brings are worth sacrificing text readability for LCD flat panel users. My view is clearly that they are not. Michel Fortin has now posted a clarification in the comments on his post. I guess what it boils down to is still the issue of whether whatever advantages transparency support brings are worth sacrificing text readability for LCD flat panel users. My view is clearly that they are not.

]]> By: Pierre Igot http://www.betalogue.com/2006/02/09/font-smoothing-in-pages-more-discussion/comment-page-1/#comment-3922 Pierre Igot Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:23:30 +0000 http://www.betalogue.com/2006/02/09/font-smoothing-in-pages-more-discussion/#comment-3922 Now <strong>that</strong> is very interesting. So it does indeed look like Mac OS X is able to do subpixel anti-aliasing and text transparency over coloured backgrounds at the same time. Which brings us back to the question of why Pages does not support it. I wonder what <a href="http://www.michelf.com/weblog/2006/subpixel-antialiasing-achilles-heel/" rel="nofollow">Michel Fortin</a> thinks about that. Now that is very interesting. So it does indeed look like Mac OS X is able to do subpixel anti-aliasing and text transparency over coloured backgrounds at the same time.

Which brings us back to the question of why Pages does not support it. I wonder what Michel Fortin thinks about that.

]]> By: ssp http://www.betalogue.com/2006/02/09/font-smoothing-in-pages-more-discussion/comment-page-1/#comment-3921 ssp Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:10:21 +0000 http://www.betalogue.com/2006/02/09/font-smoothing-in-pages-more-discussion/#comment-3921 Hm hm hm. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding things... but Apple's very own Safari doesn't seem to have problems with sub-pixel anti-aliased transparent text. see http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/other/SafariTransparentText.html Hm hm hm.

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding things… but Apple’s very own Safari doesn’t seem to have problems with sub-pixel anti-aliased transparent text.

see http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/other/SafariTransparentText.html

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