Comments on: Font rendering philosophies of Windows & Mac OS X

By: Doug Aghassi

Doug Aghassi — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:05:05 +0000

Great article, and most of the comments are by people who seem to “get it” when it comes to understanding and appreciating the Mac OS X way of font rendering.

I just finished an writing an article that extensively covers Mac vs Windows font rendering if you are still looking for more information even after reading this wonderful article and the sensible replies.

http://dougitdesign.com/blogs/blog_3_6_09_Safari-4.0-web-browser-on-Windows-and-the-Differing-font-rendering-philosophies-between-the-Mac-OS-X-and-Microsoft.html

By: Font-size rendering issues between OS X and Windows « AndyStratton.com

Font-size rendering issues between OS X and Windows « AndyStratton.com — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:03:59 +0000

[...] from Photoshop and OS X. They are rendering the fonts at a smaller aggregate width. I found another post about font rendering philosophies. Apparently, Windows does not use a linear method of scaling the [...]

By: Thomas Jones

Thomas Jones — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:14:10 +0000

Modern Linux desktops let you pick where you want to be along this trade-off, and even have an option to do the hinting only along the vertical (not quite what the agg guys describe but based on that idea)

Unfortunately due to patents Linux font rendering does not do sub-pixel kerning (this is a large chunk of the agg article is talking about… and part of why it looks good) (Adobe CoolType does, I don’t know about ClearType and Mac).

Freetype in order to get around patents on TrueType bytecodes (only certain ones) has an autohinter so if you turn on the mode that only does hinting vertically ALL fonts will be hinted equally well (that mode only works with the autohinter).

For the MS fonts the autohinter tends not to look so good (MS fonts tend come out FAR to light, probably because they were designed to let the hinting and snapping fix that…)

By: Super Mario

Super Mario — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:47:40 +0000

For the people that say they see colored pixels around anti-aliased fonts (Clear type): do you run your LCDs at their native resolution? I’m curious. I can see the colored pixels only if I come 2 inches from the screen.

Clear type can only be turned on or off at the OS level, but for some strange reason fine tuning of the clear type settings is a web only application (Active X component that runs in the browser) available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearType/tuner/Step1.aspx

This allows you to further tweak the settings and choose the font “lighness” that looks the best to you.

By: Veejay

Veejay — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:15:38 +0000

BTW, the windows screenshot (on the left) seems to be from Wordpad.
The (line) seems to be much straighter in Word 2007, perhaps Word is tweaking Cleartype or font hinting itself.

By: Damien Guard

Damien Guard — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:42:12 +0000

Charlie this is already covered in the article:

“George thinks the philosophy idea is wrong because “What percentage of Mac users sit around all day doing nothing but pre-press work?” but as Fred points out Microsoft’s desktop-user optimised rendering ends up on images and videos all over the web, thus escaping the environment for which it was crippled.”

[)amien

By: Charlie

Charlie — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:56:26 +0000

I understand the reasoning, but a web browser seems to be the wrong place for Apple to use it.

Web browsing is an activity you perform on the computer, so fonts (and font-smoothing) that are easy on the eyes when using a computer should be the top priority. I mean, how often are you going to print out a web page and be disappointed that the font-weight is slightly different than you expected?

By: Ries van Twisk

Ries van Twisk — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:12:26 +0000

When I switched from Windows 2000 and XP to my macBook (both had LCD screens) I simplyfound the text on OSX much easer to read then on Windows.

By: Grant Blakeman

Grant Blakeman — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:37:59 +0000

I really don’t like the “professionals preparing type for high-dpi print” argument. It’s technically true, but as one of those professionals, I think it’s only a small piece of the argument. The reality is, that if I wasn’t a designer, and was something else instead, I would still prefer the OSX font rendering. I simply prefer it over Windows rendering. Just like some people prefer the opposite. My point is that I think there are a lot of OSX users that really prefer the OSX rendering regardless of their profession – they just might not be able to put professional words and terms to it. The Mac font rendering may have gotten its foundation because Mac has always been preferred for print preparation, but it’s where it’s at today because a large group of us (including apple developers) simply think it looks better.

By: ed

ed — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 05:00:05 +0000

“Neither of these may matter to a casual user but for professionals preparing material destined for high DPI (film or print) then it’s a world of difference. How can you layout a page on-screen and expect the same result on the page when the font isn’t the same width?”

But don’t professional tools handle on-screen typeface’s themselves and not use the system. The adobe products I use certainly handle it themselves. Isn’t this point a bit of a strawman.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:15:12 +0000

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet – OS X’s font rendering is much more LCD friendly than Window’s font rendering for any situations where you need to use non-native resolution display settings. Windows fonts look utterly abysmal under these situations because there is no defined pixel grid for them to align to, whereas OS X’s fonts look just as smooth as they did at native resolutions.

I’m also someone who is most definitely in the Mac camp here and I am another person who spends (currently much) more than 8 hours a day on a Windows box. What XP does to Gill Sans, Book Antiqua, etc is a crime against the fonts, IMO.

By: Rich C

Rich C — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:14:20 +0000

I find the Mac way much more legible. But I prefer to sit a little farther from the screen and scan text quickly, spending little time pondering over the individual shapes of the letters. On the Mac side, even at small font sizes, “black quartz” looks like black quartz and I don’t have to slow my reading down to figure it out. On the Windows side, I have to stop and think about what it is I’m looking at — all those uneven spaces between letters and funky word alignments get in the way of my ability to simply take in the shape of the word and move on.

Sharp pixel edges only work for rectangles because pixels are rectangular. For everything else, aligning too closely to pixel edges results in combing on the side of diagonal lines and curves that just don’t curve right. All of those subtle design features of modern fonts that serve to improve readability are completely lost on Microsoft’s approach, as are the careful kerning algorithms that font designers spend ages fine tuning.

Apple’s antialiasing approach preserves all of these features, which makes for inherently more readable and elegant text. If people can get over the initial “it looks blurry” reaction, they’ll find that they read faster and more accurately, have less eye strain, and can appreciate more of the beauty of typography with the Mac’s approach.

By: Dan Palka

Dan Palka — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:03:16 +0000

I don’t understand why people insist that the Windows way is easier to read. I find both equally readable… one just looks better.

In fact I would even argue that Mac OS fonts are easier to read at small point sizes (less than 10).

By: JimC

JimC — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 07:58:38 +0000

>But how can we explain the fact that the character spacing in MS Word on Mac is so wonky?

Word does it’s own thing, vis-a-vis font display, completely divorced from OSX.

By: Jim Stewart

Jim Stewart — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:51:18 +0000

But how can we explain the fact that the character spacing in MS Word on Mac is so wonky?