Re: New GTK+ anti-aliasing patch posted

[Michael L Torrie <torriem cs byu edu>]

What I meant about turning it off and on from an API is that KDE 2.1 has a
global option to turn on anti-aliasing or not.  I would like to use the
anti-alias patches, but since I support workstations with many users, I
don't want to force all of them to have to use it.  I know that some
people dislike anti-aliasing.  This could be written into the toolkit API
somewhere.

Sharp and Crisp is not words I normally use to describe anti-aliasing
(blurry is more like it).  Just personal preference, though.  I prefer to
use AA only at large point sizes and at extremely small sizes.  This
should be something controlled by GTK, since GTK can decide which
rendering method to use.

At the smaller sizes, whatever algorithm MS Windows uses, it seems to
display better than the Xft method.  Xft seems to just render at a higher
resolution (size) and then use pixel averaging to reduce it to screen
size.  (This is what is looks like, even if that's not what's happening.)
If this is the case, then the effects of low-resolution hinting will be
lost.

Michael

On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Keith Packard wrote:

>
> Around 18 o'clock on Mar 12, Michael L Torrie wrote:
>
> > Being able to turn it on or off somehow (globaly) would be something
> > desirable.  I would expect it in the Gnome API, but I guess you'd need
> > something in GTK also.
>
> As these patches use the Xft library, the configuration available for that
> will work here.  It's nearly turing equivalent, so you can get pretty much
> any behaviour you might like.
>
> > Another thing that may be advantageous is to only anti-alias fonts above a
> > specific point size.  I find anything below 12 pts and above 9 pts to be
> > very blurry and hard to read when anti-aliased.
>
> That's probably the result of an AA algorithm not tuned to display at
> aroudn 100 dpi or lower.  Lower resolutions need accurate hinting and grid
> fitting of horizontal and vertical elements to avoid making things that
> can look sharp appear crisp.  With good TrueType fonts, I can now
> appreciate AA text at all sizes.
>
> But, if you don't agree, you can easily configure Xft to not anti-alias
> whatever sizes you like.
>
> Anyone know if these patches will work with evolution and nautilis?  I'm
> (nearly) desparate for a replacement e-mail package...
>
> keithp keithp com	 XFree86 Core Team		SuSE, Inc.
>
>