by tinbucket on 8/1/21, 6:46 PM with 124 comments
by crazygringo on 8/1/21, 7:16 PM
I'm assuming this is a modern version of GDI++, which a decade ago brought Mac-style font rendering to Windows, but stopped being maintained a while ago.
For people who aren't aware of the difference, it's essentially that Windows uses heavy font hinting to try to align character strokes with pixel boundaries which produces sharper letterforms at the cost of distortion of the aesthetic personality of the font, while Mac antialiases more to faithfully maintain the accurate letterforms of a typeface, at the cost of being blurrier.
It's basically the tabs-vs-spaces debate of font rendering. Nobody's "right", it's just personal preference. Fortunately, high-resolution "retina" style displays make the distinction much less important, in the same way that it's entirely irrelevant in high-resolution printing.
by speedgoose on 8/1/21, 7:17 PM
by didibus on 8/1/21, 7:17 PM
I wasn't sure if it was just in my head, but something about the rendering in Mac seems better to me. I don't know if they have better calibration for colors and contrast, better anti-aliasing, etc., but I seem to see the screen much better and my eyes don't strain as much.
by syspec on 8/1/21, 8:02 PM
I really don't understand when someone makes a project such as this (which seems to have been around for a while), and does not include at least 1 screenshot
by artemiszx on 8/1/21, 11:33 PM
by keb_ on 8/1/21, 7:52 PM
by pityJuke on 8/1/21, 7:24 PM
by yepthatsreality on 8/1/21, 7:12 PM
by behnamoh on 8/1/21, 8:41 PM
The effect is esp. obvious when working on Word documents. Somehow fonts are not rendered "thick" enough in Word, and this app takes care of that.
Honestly, I wish MS would do something about blurred fonts in some of the not-so-old programs. Some parts of the Windows OS itself are not rendered correctly!!
by jbverschoor on 8/1/21, 7:15 PM
by jasperry on 8/1/21, 7:29 PM
As another commenter said, moving toward higher DPI makes this less necessary. But I'm still bitter over the years of ugliness I had to suffer through after having such nice Cleartype rendering in Windows XP and 7.
by uranusjr on 8/2/21, 4:35 AM
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/06/12/font-smoothing-ant...
by rubatuga on 8/1/21, 7:11 PM
by tambourine_man on 8/1/21, 7:57 PM
by remix2000 on 8/2/21, 7:42 AM
by mastazi on 8/1/21, 11:38 PM
On low DPI screens (think 24" or 25" at 1080p) I prefer how fonts render in Windows. It seems they have better antialiasing, while Mac fonts look slightly pixelated.
However on high DPI screens (13" Retina, 25" 4K etc.) fonts on Mac look sharper while Windows fonts look a bit "soft". So I prefer Mac on those.
by thom on 8/2/21, 9:26 AM
by lxe on 8/1/21, 9:03 PM
by bruhsfx2 on 8/2/21, 2:37 AM
This tool is more important in Chinese/Japanese/Korean environment as CJK glyphs have more strokes per character as compared to Latin languages. Windows's font rendering tends to fit glyph strokes into pixels (tint).
On a low DPI settings (<100), fonts on Windows look more sharp and clear, while on macOS, which discards the bitmaps altogether, the result is blurry (albeit I still prefer to be able to appreciate the original design).
On a higher DPI settings (>130), IMO under normal font sizes (>=10pt) the font has enough pixel realestate to behave like what it was designed. The antialiasing could do its job without relying the heavily hinted result.
Here are some comparisons.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhoCr9GUYAAjzMG?format=webp Left: AppleWin (Safari for Windows) | Right: Chromium | 12px PingFang SC on 200% system scale As you can clearly see, Apple's font rendering makes every glyph clear enough while ensuring every stroke has the same weight, while Chromium, relying on Windows's font rendering makes the font jagged (stroke width varies), baseline not level (遵守 on the 3rd last line, component 辶's bottom is way up)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJUJZL8UYAAC7sC?format=webp&name... Left: AppleWin | Right: Chromium | 15px MS Gothic on 200% system scale MS Gothic has a very large character design, but on the first line of paragraph, 口 from "口周辺" is not reaching the the height it supposed to do, because of Window's approach of fitting that stroke into a line of pixels. And Windows makes the font thinner. This approach apparently ruined every diagonal strokes like 丿 and 丶, making those strokes even fainter.
I have another example of Microsoft Yahei font being drastically better on 200% with MacType but I couldn't find it at the moment.
It's suffice to say that MacType will recovered the font rendering for Windows in 200% scale. However, in 100% scale, it provides fixes when Windows messed up with fonts in some cases when it purposefully fit the strokes into pixels.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DrJStIiU0AA01uT?format=webp&name... Safari for Windows, 100% scale https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DrJStMyV4AE_b6f?format=webp&name... Vivaldi, 100% scale Font rendered on Vivaldi is thin, not equal stroke width, with jagged curves. It's miles better on Safari on Windows. Just look at the "产品" on the bottom left, Windows makes the upper 口 in the 品 painfully short in height.
While i appreciate Windows's effort to make glyphs more legible for lower pixel density displays, but at least provide a toggle to turn it off as it literally ruins everything else. Fonts MS used in every Office/Windows/even Windows Terminal showcase video are not hinted font yet the glyphs look pretty legible, and even gorgeous (if you appreciate the curves of Segeo UI) in a 4:2:0 subsampled video, animated, yet average Windows users can't find a way to experience this on daily basis without MacType.
by maxharris on 8/1/21, 7:08 PM
by chawyehsu on 8/2/21, 8:57 AM
by bluedino on 8/2/21, 2:40 AM
by fallenspec on 8/1/21, 7:12 PM
IIRC He said that when Apple got the cleartype patent (due to the Apple/Microsoft cross patent agreement that happened in the late 90s), they kinda messed up the implementation of cleartype and Windows actually implements it correctly and Mac OS X (now Mac OS) doesn't.
So I find this somewhat amusing.