Slashdot Mirror
Anti-Aliased GNOME and Mozilla
Ur@eus writes "Want to see how nice your GNOME desktop and Mozilla browser will look anti-aliased? We have just posted screenshots and a
non-stable patch on Gnotices" Here's evolution and
mozilla displaying slashdot. Neither are perfect, but its still exciting to see progress.
Fonts at small sizes often look better in their raw bitmap (or truetype hinted) form; anti-aliasing makes things look blurry. I'm no big font expert on linux, but is it possible to use anti-aliasing for only large fonts (say, 14pt+) and really tiny fonts as Windows does?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
It just goes to show how little you have to do to get attention and praise from the open source world, which is a good thing I guess.
-Jon
Streamripper
this is my sig.
Misreading a post that is supposed to be a humorous comment on human behavior as a personal attack and responding by calling someone "bigoted" is even more intellectually lazy than the behavior you decry...
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THANK YOU!
I was trying to figure out why it looked like such crap!
To my mind the whole point of Linux, GNOME, KOffice, Apache and every other open source project isn't to produce bleeding edge software. It is to raise the bottom line of functionality for software. Anti-aliased fonts are now becoming a part of Linux, which means that every future operating system from now on needs to offer them.
.NET as Linux catches up in so many directions such as with their desktop software, printer support (e.g. CUPS) and so forth. But Linux is raising the bottom line and as the gaps are filled in, its becoming a stable and functional operating system that costs nothing. And Microsoft has to work harder to justify charging money for their operating system.
Sure, Microsoft is forging ahead with
In a way I hope Linux doesn't drive Microsoft out of the operating business. The only way that Microsoft is going to survive against the Linux threat is to start pushing ahead and finding ways to be competitive in terms of delivering value, instead of creative in ways of gouging money.
If Microsoft wants to keep the checklist of features that makes Windows superior and worth paying money for long, they're going to have to keep adding items. Anti-aliased text has just been removed from the list of items that Microsoft can hold over Linux.
Hmm, and I wondered where those came from. For a while there there seemed to be applications using the IBM guidelines as stated above, the apple guidelines, and of course the scattering of "I can come up with my own shortcuts" programs roaming around.
The reason is may be because at small point sizes, with black text on a white background, the edge of a font might not actually have any black pixels.
X (>= 4.0.2) supports AA natively but the apps have to make use of it, which is what they're starting to do.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Actually, I'd beg to differ. For AA algorithms that are *properly* implemented, AA gives a larger effective screen resolution, since the blending causes the view to see a perfectly smooth line in between the actual positions of the pixels of the screen. That makes small point sizes easier to read (for many people, anyway) because the blending enhances the real shape of the letter (parts of which are smaller than 1 pixel)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
they removed the messages and links..'nuff said, obviously /. got scared and ran.. *shrugs* either that or the ISP quietly *removed* the msg's because it figured no one would care to look them up (read also, I am an artist, I have no life ;) )
thereby complying with M$ even though *we* urged /. to fight it.. ah well... c'est la vie noir
.sig under construction
thats great, lets do something about that hideous times new roman font and youve got yourselves a convert
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NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
It is indeed shiny. I can't wait this this become standard for the two main toolkits. KDE has the capability too.
Now all they need to do is work out a consistent UI between GTK and QT apps. Roll on the unified UI Style Guide!
It is important to understand that there are two ways to perform anti-aliasing, one for very small fonts (which is usually called hinting) and one for large fonts (usually called anti-aliasing.)
In PostScript Type 1 fonts, for example, each glyph has information contained within the file called rendering hints. These allows the font renderer to shift the "legs" and "stems" of the glyph so that they are on the pixel boundaries by informing the renderer how far it is allowed to move the boundaries without making the font look crappy (i.e. unreadable). These hints ensure that there is at least one "white" pixel between the legs of an 'h' at very small font sizes, where without hinting they would be rendered as a single two pixel wide bar, making 'h', 'b' and 'k' indistinguishable. Similarily, with very thin fonts, a renderer that doesn't use hinting may decide that a glyph doesn't cover enough of the pixel to be rendered at all. Suddenly, many 'I' glyphs would simply disappear... ;-)
In this sense, hinting could technically be called anti-aliasing, but in my experience, the term anti-aliasing is usually reserved for the case of larger font sizes looking jaggy.
Thank you for the explaination, but please add that the PS/TT Font Renderers in XFree don't handle the hinting information very well at all.
Poor hinting, NOT the lack of Anti-Aliasing, is the #1 reason that text looks like crap on XFree. While Windows has AA, it's only enabled for very small or relatively large fonts. Unless you routinely surf the web with a 16pt font, AA doesn't buy you squat on Windows.
My fear is that the "solution" to the Font problem on XFree will aliasing now that it's been invented and integrated into the popular toolkits. Well, that's not solving the problem - it's masking a symptom. And really, looking at blurry 12 point text is not as great as it might seem from those screenshots.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Its not salesmanship or first impressions. The benefits of anti-aliasing are just as real as higher resolution screens, higher refresh rate monitors, and ergonomic chairs.
Any bets how long before we see ximians in fuckedcompany.com?
I think this will slow X Window down to crawl. It's already slow, but at least it only has to transfer bitmaps to the server and cache them there. It's not an option with AA. It will transfer letter images in 24 bit without any caching. And if you remember that X uses IPC even locally and IPC has never been as fast as direct API calls... Goddamit, somebody invent some replacement to X!
Windows has been my platform of choice precicely because of the smooth edges on the fonts.
Really? In all the years windows9x has supported this I have never noticed a difference. I always attributed this to the fact that I run my monitor at a real high resolution where any anti-alaising effect would be diminished.
-nite
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Transmeta and Redhat's venture capitalists and
stock holders paid for it. Thanks guys, shame
about the stock price.
>Obviously you need to learn something about User
>Interface and appreciation.
You say this after flaunting your preference for antialiased fonts, as if to imply that anyone who doesn't use antialiasing in their design is a moron. The first rule of UI, whether graphical or not, is "give the user the choice." You prefer antialiased fonts. I don't, cause they give me a headache, plus I don't need fonts when I'm looking at porn.
This is definitely a step forward. It just needs to be made into a preference which the user can configure to his taste.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
X does not do Anti-Aliased fonts.
From X 4.0.2 on X does have support for things like antialiasing and alpha blending.
Apps just need to start supporting them, which is exactly what this article is about.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
It has the same pixel layout of LCD screens? That's why it looks fine. On my triniton Dell, it still looks weird. It just inflames your eyes. Hard to explain.
d00d ur l337! 31337 |\/|0n10R!
Definitions:
XML: Leading the way to make the web a ebiz thing
Actually, they are... just only in certain cases. Usually large or bolded text is antialiased, but the Windows fonts are, in general, optimized for 10-12 points, so they look better without the antialiasing. Once you try to scale them up, the antialiasing kicks in and smooths things out so it looks better.
--
47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Moreover, I can't argue that scalability, reliability, efficiancy and the like are more important than having fonts with smooth edges. Still, for my surfing dollar, Windows has been my platform of choice precicely because of the smooth edges on the fonts.
Sounds silly, doesn't it?
But hey, silly first impressions count for a lot. People buy iMacs because they look cool. People spend thousands to make their cars look faster with body kits and the like. And people think that Windows is more advanced because it looks cleaner. It's not logical or fair, but it's true.
Anyhow, kudos to the Gnome crowd for getting this done. Now if only "Gnome" didn't automatically remind me of that "Scary Indian Fakir with No Legs and the Squeaky Cart" episode of the X-Files a few weeks back (shiver)....
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
What I'd really like to see is some sub-pixel rendering. Then we could start to see what LCD displays (and other displays with very precise pixel placement) can do. -Steve
While I think it is great that is GNOME moving forward, are anti-aliased fonts that great?
:(
I have been running Nautilus PR3 and they just don't do it for me. I would rather have the current font setup.
I think this is just a case of "we dont' have it so if must be really cool" or "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence". Microsoft has had aa-fonts for a long time and only uses them in about 20% of the time.
Slashdot with aa-fonts didn't look too hot
Kevin
Obviously you don't read much but just look at porn. To look at porn you don't need anti-aliased fonts.
If you actually try and wade through the load-of-troll crap
Obviously you need to learn something about User Interface and appreciation.
--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
Oblig content: anti-aliased fonts are blurry and nasty.
+++
+++
NO CARRIER
What monitor is that and how much does one cost?
Also, I think that the aliasing actually helps to differentiate between letterforms on current monitor screens, particularly when looking at sans-serif fonts. When fonts are too fuzzy, you have to focus more intently on the actual letterfrom to discern what letter is being represented. Thus, the headache.
As far as I'm concerned, antialiasing is great in graphics apps but not all that useful as long as our screen resultions are still so horrible. Give me a monitor with 1200 dpi resolution - THAT would be progress. Antialiasing is just a workaround that just doesn't work for me.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
not to mention even windows 3.1 had true type, which looked WAY better at low resolutions (that is, on the screen) than the fonts in X do today, unless you have a true type server...
-- Cure for Cancer instead of SETI! (only w32 yet - mail and beg)
Um, X doesn't have a UI. That's the responsibility of 'manager' applications that run on top of X.
This sounds like I'm nitpicking, but it's important to keep in mind. It's a double-edged sword. A lot of X fans defend the separation between low-level API (X), high-level API (a toolkit like QT or GTK) and window manager. But, it's that very separation that prevents the level of interoperability between windowed applications that you see in MacOS, BeOS, or even, in its own endearingly half-assed fashion, Windows. I don't have to worry about what toolkit a given BeOS application was built with; as a user, I shouldn't need to know that anyway.
I'd also like to submit the idea that this isn't just a "non-technical user" concern. It's an efficiency concern. The fact that someone is competent enough to work around inconsistencies in interfaces doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to work faster if those interfaces were consistent. As a "UI Geek," I'm not arguing that we need to take away the beloved CLI (even in BeOS, I'm using the bash shell a lot myself), but I am arguing that a full-featured, responsive GUI where menu behavior and drag-and-drop behaves more or less consistently across the desktop and all applications greatly enhances productivity and power.
Ease of learning doesn't necessarily mean ease of use, but consistency, responsiveness and quick feedback usually does factor into ease of use. The separation into separate processes, at least as it exists now, hinders these goals. Some of that can be overcome through brute force as CPU power increases--but it can only be truly achieved through a conscious effort to design a coherent system, not independent pieces.
Damn those screenshots are sexy. Those nice looking screens remind me of why I still love my Color NeXTstation slab so much... Can't wait until it's stable and a little more polished!
.
Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my disk????
Excuse me, but I happen to LIKE hard edged fonts, so excuse me. I find dull gray on black (read: Consol) to be the perfect friggin font face!
I actualy LIKE ASCII, go figure eh?
And for who ever marked me as a troll, your a bigot, moderation is to mod up comments that raise up points of intrest, even if they are opposed to yours. I do not believe in bloat and I believe that a AA engine is bloat, it is not required, therefore it is bloat.
I looked at the screenshot, its ugly, period. I perfer nice blocky letters, excuse me for being mathmatical logical and LIKING 90 degree hard edges, so fucking sue me, I like pixilation, is there a problem with that??
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
This technology existed in Windows 3.0 Is the latest tech news these days really reduced to how open source free software is finally getting some of the features that existed in closed source technologies for years and years? I'd rather see stories on innovation -- open or closed source.
One thing that may confuse people though:
The third mouse button (paste) is the MIDDLE ONE. If you have two buttons, hit them both simultaneously. If that doesn't work, set Emulate3Buttons in your XF86Config.
I always copy and paste with my mouse. Hitting those ridiculous key combos is annoying when there's a much quicker way.
Wow... it's so shiny....
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
why do I care if my fonts are "anti-aliased". what does this mean?
;-) movies I used to download from the Internet : most stupid people encode the movies at 48kHz, and don't take the time to downsample (lowpass filtering) the sound stream to 44.100 kHz, which happens to be the playback frequency of most consumer soundcards. As a result, you get a sound that sucks on most systems, while taking more space.
Alias is a phenomenon you get whenever you sample a system under the nyquist frequency of the system, which is half the highest frequency of the system. Typically, the frequency components above the nyquist frequency will be mirrored -folfing- with respect to the nyquist frequency, and will thus create noise in the frequency band we are looking at.
This is typically what happens when you listen to an old sound file. Of course a significant part of the noise comes from the fact the bit resolution is low, which gives an SNR of 48dB. Whith 16-bit sound you have a SNR of 96 dB which is much better. But you also get much noise because you sampled at say 22.050 kHz, which sucks.
This is also what happens to be a big drawback to DIVX
As I just mentionned, you can elimlinate much of the alias problems by filtering out the frequency components, a process that will also throw out some of the useful components, because an infinite order filter is not realizable.
Let's now take a look at the alias phenomenon on computer graphics. As there is no more analog computer with a full analog display, you have to take samples -pixels- of the idealized image. Typically on white-and-black text, the idealized color will go from white to black as fast as possible, maybe in one tenth of a pixel distance. This is by definition not realizable, as the sampler -the rendering subprogram- will only see black, and then white on the next pixel. I don't have enough insight to tell how this folding results in bad quality images, maybe someone can take over at this point.
Again, the solution to graphical aliasing is easy : do lowpass filtering. You might want to take a 2D-fft of the image, and filter it in the frequency domain, and then go back to the "time"-domain, but you can also do something easier : calculate 4 times as much pixels, and take the mean out of them. This is in fact the same, as what you then just have done is integrating and the Laplace-transform of an integrator is 1/s , which is a lowpass filter.
you can also take in account that the 4X supersampling mentionned above also is alias, because of the INFINITE bandwith of the idealized system to be rendered. So again, you can decide to supersample the subpixels. Of course after a certain depth, it won't matter anymore to your eyes, and you can stop. In a well designed system, there will generally be a an automatic choice whether or not to supersample a pixel. This is then called adaptive supersampling
screenshot look fine under netscrape 4.75 (I'll switch to mozilla once i get my new 1ghz machine.)
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Really. I use anti-aliased fonts everyday on BeOS, and these days, I can't stand to be near X (even with the good MS-made TrueType fonts.) Of course, some people are extremely sensetive to visual anomolies (I can see flicker at 85Hz, makes buying monitors an expensive ;) Whatever your preference, do not discount it as a waster of CPU cycles. During your day to day desktop tasks, the alpha-blender on the GFX-card isn't doing anything, so one might as well put it to use. (Kinda like how "free memory is wasted memory")
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Am I the only one who is greatly disturbed by the fact that the png of Mozilla displaying Slashdot actually shows the link to itself? Doesn't this violate causality? What is going on here?
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
why do I care if my fonts are "anti-aliased". what does this mean?
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
I love the mozilla screenshot. In the font department Moz is much better than netscape, but is it me, or does Evolution look very strange.
What's going on here, can anyone clue me in?
"This is not a company that appears to be bothered by ethical boundaries."
Attorney General Mike Hatch on Microsoft
but will it make it anti-biased?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
This should make Taco's Anti-Aliased Font Fetish positively spewing with excitement. :)
congrats to the AA team,
but I think its time to stop copying and start innovating. Things like this shoudn't make *huge* news. Its a font, its antialiased, its been in mac os for 10+ years.
Wonder what Raskin thinks of this :)
It would be cool to have AA type in mi terminal tho
Dada Mail - Program, Art Project or Absurdity?
You're so SMOOOOOOTH
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
Well it would be nice to see more ppl to grab a hold of a real OS instead of something like M$ eXPerement... so we can get more intresting software :) The "pretty fonts" is part of how to get the astectic-minded dolt to buy it... and no, binary compatablity isn't going to cut it. If ppl buy, the software will come.
Karma whorin' since 1999
All in all anti-aliasing on text always seemed to make it less "crisp" to me. I'd rather see jagies than to basically blur the text.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Dunno if you looked at KDE. But it is pretty decent. If you are 'inside' KDE environment, everything works seemingly (cut'n paste / drag 'n drop -- b/w applications too). Try KDE2, you won't be dissappointed. their window manager still sucks though ( I am a WIndowmaker person)
When X was 'invented' there is no concept of 'inter-application communication' through GUI (how ever other means as pipes / sockets / shared mem existed on Unix for a long time). Then these things were 'glued on'.
One advantage windows had however, is they came out at a time these GUI things were around (MAcs) and they set the standard (ie this is how you cut text / this is how you drag stuff). So no wonder every win application behaves the same way.
ALL screen fonts on OSX are anti aliased, which, after a few hours will become very hard to look at without getting a huge headache. I'm concerned about the wondow shade too. there were reasons the fonts weren't AA, they are easier to read in certain situations. AA is really nice when you have big fonts that are italisized.
Dada Mail - Program, Art Project or Absurdity?
If you want to keep the integrity of the font, it is much more important to anti-alias small point sizes. Bitmapped fonts are carefully designed to look self-consistent within a particular point size, but are very inconsistent from size to size.
Characteristics like relative boldness cannot be preserved by bitmapped fonts at nearly equal point sizes. Line weights are 1, 2, possibly 3 pixels. Anti-aliasing takes advantage of shades of gray on the edges to give the effect of a resolution much greater than actual.
Microsoft's rationale is probably that at small point sizes you can't really tell what the font looks like, so any vague approximation that looks readable will do. At larger point sizes you can actually tell what the font is supposed to look like, and the jaggies can no longer be hidden by distorting the typeface.
Uh, guys, compare that screenshot to a non-anti-aliased version. I checked both my 1024x768 laptop and my 1600x1200 desktop.
Both were MUCH easier to read when they weren't anti-aliased! Let's go for readability, not fanglage, OK?
Nevertheless there is a small but important difference. The KDE article was posted as an X11 event while Gnome gets this extra article. This might look as a small difference but we all know that slashdot articles tend to be more Gnome friendly.
:-))
And as somebody mentioned before:
"Every post CmdrTaco does about KDE is riddled with excuses ("Most of what is there is already being done within efm...", "Of course this stuff is really only with icons and images, and not fonts...")."
So the first poster was not completly wrong...
And no: I will not cry
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You can specify whether the font is anti-aliased along with a host of other things in your
XftConfig file.
It also lets you alias fonts you don't have to known fonts etc. etc.
Si
Someone already posted a comment about this, it was at -1 and I was going to mod it up 'till I read it all. The last paragraph really was flamebate.
3 /
;)
So, here's the content:
KDE and QT can do AA fonts etc too, it's not in the official QT yet, not the official KDE but it looks like it should make it in to Qt 2.3ish and KDE2.2ish. These versions guesses only.
Some articles are:
The status of QT and AA:
http://dot.kde.org/981146691/
More details WRT KDE support:
http://dot.kde.org/980951106/980972801/98097392
Anyway, I've seen many similar screenshots and it looks great.
BTW: If you haven't checked it out recently, Konqueror (KDE's web browser) has vastly improved with 2.1B2. Check it out for sure! It does a lot of the things people are waiting for in Nautilus (and it lets you use Evolution at the same time
Ben
--
"The problem? If you try to read a paragraph of antialiased text, it just looks blurry. There's nothing I can do about it, it's the truth. Compare these two paragraphs: ..."
//joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$190
See
Actually, BeOS anti-aliases ALL point sizes, and it has the best text I've seen (aside from maybe QNX6, but that call is totally subjective) It probably uses a better TrueType renderer (both use BitStream's) but it just shows that anti-aliasing does not make text ineherently blurrier. Also, its a god send when you're trying to read 6-8 point type, since without anti-aliasing, they're nearly illegible.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Yup, we've now got anti-aliasing on the operating system for which I have never paid a dime. ;)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Umm, both QNX RtP and BeOS 5 are free and had (better) AA support much longer than X has, so eat it
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
See I think this is pretty cool. And it gives me a reason to try X 4.0.2, it's interesting to see KDE and Gnome go head to head in features. Especially with this AAT ( which is really pretty BTW ). Personally... i like GNOME but KDE has some cool features. To me, the more competition between these two interfaces is good because it benefits us with constant improvement. Fun to see another chapter.
- "Never let a computer tell me shit." - DelTron Zero
To what are you referring to as nededing to be cleaned up?
And while this isn't a flame, I'd disagree with WindowsGUI just working. Why just this morning my Win2k Pro (built on NT Technology!) locked up while I was doing something in explorer (which I rarely use for a reason!). Mind you, tho, I have to use Win, unfortunately, cuz on this machine I do audio recording as well..
Anyway, I rarely have probs with X. While I agree it's pretty big, I feel it's much more flexible than Win. Especially since I love running things remotely on my office and home machines. All I need is an X server, ssh, and I'm off with my Gnome session. If I wanted to try this with M$ stuff, I'd have to d/l some version of IE and then probably some service pack and *then* their proprietary client...
And lately, it seems like the whole 'skinning' thing is picking up quite a bit of steam on Win stuff. I think it's cool. I want my stuff to look like how I want it. I don't like M$ explorer and on Linux/BSD/*nix I (usually) have the choice to change that. Of course your avg./beginner won't want this and that's fine.
As far as AA, I guess it's cool. But when you start running res' above 1200 or so, it doesn't really matter much.
And I can't stand to develop on an NT/2k box.. Ugh!! No multiple desktops. I don't know how people alt-tab thru 10 or 12 different windows. Drives me nuts!!
Yup if you want to give up being able to customize your GUI and all of the advantages of *nix because god forbid you might have to think and learn your apps. I've got a news flash for you the Windows GUI is horrible it is just what many people know and they have convinced themselves that it does not suck. Take a couple of hours to set your Linux box up well you will save yourself days with the time you can save and all the other things that work better. AA text can only make this better and is a *really* good idea. My GUI (E + Gnome + the Irix theme) work very well thank you very much and because I took a few minutes to learn it it all works like I expect it to. In contrast Windows "feels" broken to me.
Linux the choice of smart people!!
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Is it just me, or is this kind of look-at-my-new-shiny toy what most of the effort in the open source community seems to be going for?
No, its not a toy. Windows has Anti-Aliased fonts, X does not. I use Word Perfect 8 Under Windows and Linux, and I hate to admit that it looks awful under Linux. This is not the fault of Corel, it is the fault of X. X does not do Anti-Aliased fonts. The lettering in X has "Jaggies" you may be familar with how much 3Dfx was going on and on about their FSAA Technology, its a similar idea. Anti-Aliased fonts are simply easier to read.
Under X, even though people try to make the skins pretty, the actual UI is anything but clean. Can't we work on cleaning things up, and making the UI more reliable instead of making pretty shiny toys?
I almost suspect you are an old-style troll, but maybe this is a genuine comment. Perhaps you should try the latest versions of KDE (quite clean IMO) cleaner than the Windows interface at any rate. I myself admit that when in Linux and X I use one of the "wizbang" interfaces on my desktop, but here is the kicker, I prefer it to the Windows desktop. (For those who care, I use Gnome and E with the Blueheart Theme over 9 Virtual Desktops) What it comes down to is choice. If you don't like the wizbang "features" of some of the desktops, don't use them. I have seen KDE and FWMV95 so configured as to be identical to Windows, and by default, KDE looks much like Windows, so if you don't like the interface, head over to themes.org and pick a really "boring" one. Remember, Linux is not for everyone, nor should it be, but it is, first and foremost about choice.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
And I can't stand to develop on an NT/2k box.. Ugh!! No multiple desktops. I don't know how people alt-tab thru 10 or 12 different windows. Drives me nuts!!
Then go and download a window manager. They're not that tough to find. Try doing a search for VirtuaWin - it's GPL'ed and everything, and works quite nicely.
Be-fan can see flicker at 85Hz.
I can't see it but my migranes dropped to about half as frequent (1/four months vs. 1/two months) when I switched to a LCD screen from 72Hx CRT. If you've ever had a migrane you know that was US$2000 very, very well spent.
Even now that they're controllable with Imitrex (tm) (q.v.) it's worth it.
And fonts are very viewable at small sizes with a good renderer (Windoze) rather than AA -- even on a square pixel LCD. -Brian
Whoops! My bad. That's what I get for trusting my memory of an old slashdot story. :)
zsazsa
Click for a screenshot of the article you are now reading...
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
SuSE already has (experimental) RPMS on their ftp server for KDE2/w AA fonts.
e 86 -4.0.2-SuSE/
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/KDE2/
It requires X 4.0.2 which is found below (and contains the experimental QT built with AA support).
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/X/XFree86/XFre
It would be fantastic if it weren't slower than shit. Oh well, I guess that's why they call it experimental.
X has support, that is why Gnome and KDE now have support.
The bravado is because for Gnome to have antialias, X needs to have support and Gtk+ needs to have support.
Support in X was finished just recently (in XFree86 4.0.2), and support in Gtk+ is now available (as stated in this article).
You COULD have Gtk+ do this on it's own, but it'll probably be software based and slow. Nautilus already does this the hard way, and that isn't excactly racing.
You stupid troll. The patch to QT that is used for antialiasing under KDE uses the render extension of XFree86 too, so the antialiasing code used is the same.
It still looks cool, though. And I'd likely end up using it for most stuff :-) And the problem with
fonts becoming blurry goes down at high resolution (but of course, so does the advantages of aa), so
at 1600x1200 at home it should look ok :)
The reason?
http://primates.ximian.com/~vladimir/sgi.jpg
I want one too! =)
This is a toolkit problem, not an X problem. Besides the lack AA fonts (which is IMHO an overrated problem) You're blaming X for something it has no control over.
If every app you run uses a different toolkit, then you're going to end up with an inconsistant desktop. Pick GTK+ or Qt, and standardize on that if it is important to have a constistant look to your desktop.
No, it's mozilla that's broken under windows. NT has had antialiased fonts for a couple of years (the first rev of NT I used was 4 sp 3 which had it.) Mozilla just uses GTK everywhere, so if they don't use the proper local APIs then they won't get the full breadth of services.
What your really want is the UUWA (Unix Unified Widget API) It's really time to seperate the apps and the widget sets. Widget sets provide a standard API, apps use the standard API, and the user chooses whichever widget set they like best. Everyone ends up happy (except those programmers belonging to the XWSDC (X Widget Set of the Day Club)
;)
As for speed, the anti-aliased text could probably be cached at some point (since 99% of text is drawn in white). Even if it wasn't, lots of OSs do full time anti-aliasing, and the performance hit is extremely minimal.
Still, as a graphics-oriented person, I find your comment "yet more processor and memory overhead just to draw the screen" very funny. From my POV, drawing the screen is the single most important task of the OS
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I agree. What I want more than anything is for XMMS and Mozilla to look like the rest of my interface. But, alas, a great deal of effort was put into making these apps "skinable", which means "can look like anything except, everything else on the desktop".
I know, I could probably get or build skins that look exactly like whatever widget set I'm using at the moment, but why should I? My system still gets hit with the overhead of drawing the skin. And, why should I have to hunt around for a skin for XMMS, Mozilla (and any other app that decides to be skinned) every time I change my GTK theme?
And back on topic... The same thing might apply to antialiasing. If it's handled by the video card, then great, but I don't think it is. That means yet more processor and memory overhead just to draw the screen. It's definitely a feature I'd like to be able to turn off--I can read my pixelated screen just fine, thanks.
Greg
I download the images and compared the slashdot pic in xv next to Netscape 4.75 using Lucida B&H 12 which is about the same size. The antialiased version makes me strain my eyes.
I question why there red and yellow pixels when antialiasing black text on a blue-grey background. Is this just limited color depth and, if so, what's it like in 24bit?
The only other reason I've could imagine for the colorful text is if they're trying to compensate for the displacements of the individual color elements, like with LCD screens. In either case, I can see the tiny red and yellow edges on my screen.
I can't access either server (it's 5:57pm ET)
not quite. that seems to be an internal link?
http://primates/~vladimir/aa.tar.gz ?
I tried replacing "primates" with ximian.com but it didn't work either.
It sounds to me like you have anti-aliasing set to operate on too small of font sizes. You really want to have the boundaries of the glyphs to be much smaller than the average size of whitespace within the glyphs. What is happening is that the intensity of the whitespace within the gylphs is not completely "white", so that your eyes (and brain) have to work extra hard on recognising the boundaries of the glyphs.
So try upping the threshold at which anti-aliasing takes effect. You should notice an improvement and still get to see pretty typesetting on the screen.
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You mean here.
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47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
here
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Gnome already has a similar way to render high-quality anti-aliased images using a similar method. This is done via the GnomeCanvas widget, which uses Libart/GDKPixbuf I believe. Take a looksie at Nautilus for an example, which has been using this for a few months now.
signature smigmature
- James
XFree86 4.0.x supports Freetype for font rendering, which AFAIK means that you are able to use antialiased Truetype fonts for apps that support the render extension, and you can also use truetype fonts (without AA) for legacy apps (under older version of XFree you can do the same by using a truetype capable fontserver).
Uhmm? Linux has had support for more than 4 CPU's for a while now. There's been reports about people successfully running Linux of 14 CPU Sparc machines, for instance.
I think it's something that can take getting used to.
Acorn made anti-aliasing part of their RISC OS operating system ten years ago... and I've still not seen anything that competes with it. It was usable on a 640x256 display. Not everyone liked it: I guess some people just see it as out-of-focus and strain their eyes. But it did allow you to get use very small pixel-size fonts, giving you a lot of desktop space for such a small resolution.
I've put some screenshots up at: http://www.backroom.uklinux.net/pictures/riscos/
'aa.png' and 'al.png' show a 480x352 desktop, with and without anti-aliasing. (If you are using Netscape 4, you might want to save these pictures out and view them in something else).
Acorn's system uses vector fonts, with hinting for small point sizes. Unlike most other systems, it doesn't just stick grey dots around diagonal lines: it renders the font at twice the resolution then resamples it at screen resolution.
It also uses a quarter-pixel coordinate system, so the spacing between characters it much more even.
-- Andrem
There has been a major scientific break-in
What about an updated Mozilla screenshot? The text on the Evolution screenshot and the menu bar of Mozilla look great - I guess this is because the fonts are outline/vector fonts. However, the Times font on the Slashdot page shown in the Mozilla screenshot looks bad. It's my guess that the software doing the anti-aliasing is trying to anti-alias a bitmap version of Times, and consequently making a mess. Try using an outline/vector font where the bitmaps are not available.
Good news, the nag is gone, ad sponsored it is.... Hooray!
Have a look here!
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Moritz
__________________
Would be cool not to have to jump through hoops every time I set up a linux box just to get all the websites to show up nicely.
It's also pretty hard to argue with the fact that there are more freely, and commercially available truetype fonts than any other, and when exchanging documents with people on other platforms, or viewing most web pages, truetype fonts are a neccesity.
To me, I'd rather see wider font support overall than efforts to blur existing fonts, which most likely don't look like they should anyway.
________
I can't wait till the day irony blue screen's my bionic eyes.
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
Oh, using POVray do draw the screen - what excellent idea!
Meybe he's a troll and posting this argument over and over again trying to gain karma.
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You're right, I meant this story. Quit crying.
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47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
You didn't mention IE, so I figure you were talking about Linux. But then why did you fail to mention Konqueror? It's as if everyone ignores this browser, yet it's likely the best one available for Linux.
And if it's because you haven't tried it, well.. try it! KDE won't bite =) (take that both ways).
-Justin
I have had anti-aliased fonts in all the applications(QT) that I use for over two months. I enjoy them very much and they look *BETTER* than windows fonts in all cases. This did take a bit of work to set up, but it is worth the effort.
People that say that AA fonts make their eyes strain, probably have their DPI set incorrectly or some other problem. The AA part of AA fonts should not be distinguishable from normal reading distances.
Matt Newell
I'm reading an article on slashdot about screenshots. Click on the screenshot and it shows the article on slashdot!
Which came first? The article or the image?
I feel like my brain is about to blow core.
Check out this screenshot for comparison. On the right is the screenshot from ximian/~jacob and on the left is It mozilla displaying the same page on an NT4 workstation.
For some reason mozilla chose a sans-serif font under windows and a serif font under Gnome, but despite this it is still possible to see that anti-aliasing actually makes the text look blurry.
What makes small fonts look so nice under windows is proper rendering with hints and not anti-aliasing.
I don't know for sure but I think EFM will use EVAS the enlightenment canvas widget. EVAS supports anti aliasing and hardware aceleration etc.
Mozilla and, of course, gnome use gtk+ and that has to support anti-aliasing seperately.
KDE 2.1 has anti-aliased fonts I think.
yup, thanks. Don't know how my link ended up that way :)
I'm surprised this wasn't a priority a couple of years ago. I must admit that I'm a basically a linux newbie, I've only started running the OS regularly in the past 2 years, even though I played around with it for a little bit back in '96.
I was so surprised when I first brought up the slashdot page in linux, it looks so bad without anti-alaising. Anyway, congrats to the AA team, I can't wait to download a stable version.
gnome news is /.ed, where can I get the patch?
He has some very valid points! He is not a troll, this is the truth. Bill Gates is still evil, but he's very right.
Definitions:
XML: Leading the way to make the web a ebiz thing
/.ed
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This
Win3.1 did not have AA, even windows 95 needed the plus pack to enable AA. Granted the Mac has had Anti-aliasing for years.
Now this is a troll if I ever saw one. No one could ever seriously think of CDE as a good thing. Even Sun is stating a move to Gnome. While I cannot say whether gnome or kde is better, but I'll take almost anything over CDE, that thing is just a horrible piece of crap..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
-- of Windows and their fonts are still better. However in KDe2 with freetype2 + rendering extension Using the MS fonts :-) I get a very good looking screen experience.
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Moritz
Oh, using POVray do draw the screen - what [an] excellent idea
>>>>>>>>>>>
If you're going to be anal, be careful about your *own* word usage!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The slashdot screenshot referenced was done using an older version of some color code; this has since been fixed. I've placed a new screenshot in place of the old one.
There's a few buglets, but they're mostly related to memory usage and getting the right font based on the requested X font; other than that, things work fairly well.. (I run my entire desktop antialiased with only minor glitches).
That's pretty cool. It's nice to see that Gnome is catching up to Windows, MacOS, and BeOS on the display front...
Chikli Consulting LLC - http://agileshrugged.com
No, you are incorrect in suggesting that I'm saying the projects should merge.
I'm arguing for a consistent UI. Yes, competition is good, but first and formost is a consistently behaving UI (really - those that have standardized interfaces don't worry about competition, those who have competition worry about standrized UIs). You're a developer, and it sounds liek your workmates are - you seem to pick toolktis based on how easy theya re to develop for. But face the inevitable reality that end user spick apps based on quality rather than toolkit. There's no reason File -> Open should look different in KDE than GNOME. Yes, let them use different keyboard shortcuts. Bet let them use different keyboard shortcuts over every applciation, rather than 45% each.
isnt that galeon?
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***
using Mozilla and they look blurry to me. Used Netscape and the evolution was unreadable.
They seem harder on the eyes to read. I'm using a screen resolution of 1024x 768 (or whatever it is).
Not a fan so far - any comments/suggestions to change my mind?
..........FULL STOP.
looks pertty sweet, with current hardware, it is a
must to have AA!
Yow!
Anti-aliasing is good, very good, especially for vector graphics, which fonts are a special case of. However, fonts usually are not pure vector graphics, they, meaning good True Type fonts like Verdana (designed by Matthew Carter), look best without anti-aliasing at small sizes (13px (9pt) and below).
However any font larger than that needs anti-aliasing.
The other problem is that X users usually look to anti-aliasing as a panacea to all their font problems, when the solution might be just using better fonts - use Times New Roman instead of Times (much better for screen, not sure about the print), Arial instead of Helvetica (better hinted) etc.
But then it took Microsoft 20 years to produce whereas it took Linux folk 10 years. As for innovation, why has Windows NT only just started supporting more than 4 processor SMP when every other server OS (apart from Linux) has had it for ages. Linux has been around for 10 years, MSDOS and it's spinoffs have been around for about 22. MacOS had an excellent interface when MS were still selling a very poor Unix ripoff.
AA is enabled in the QT and KDE included in the Red Hat 7.1 beta.
Anyway, I've seen many similar screenshots and it looks great.
Yes it does. Congratulations all around.
Seems fuzzy and un readable to me, look at "evolution" screen shot. Upper right corner the word "Programs" - I'm sorry - but all letters should be equally colored and clear, they are not.
Anti-alias is nice - at larger font sizes, ie: a fly on an elephants ass is realatively tiny, it looks good, it blends good. In contrast, a fly on a dung-bettle is realtively big and not appropriate at that level. The anti-aliasing fonts fonts in this example look horrible for that reason. For instance, look at the email message and try to read the last sentance, it reads like this:
Annie Easley is a computer scientist studying energy projections for NASA. She has worked at NASA's Lewis Research Center since 1995!
I sure don't want to read lots of stuff the way the show, as I can't read it, it's too hard. I have enought stuff to do today - I don't need to be slowed down trying to read things, it's like having a bad pair of glasses. I prefer readablity.
Call me picky, but I think the screen shots (a lossless .PNG file, BTW) show Evolution and Mozilla as TOO anti-aliased, so that letter "o's" and "c's" and "w's" and "m's" and "e's" and "s's" look a bit odd.
It is a lot better, though.
Just tone it down a bit and I'm totally happy!
It was news worthy when KDE got AA. Quit crying.
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47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
This isn't JUST anti-aliasing -- it's subpixel font rendering, which Microsoft calls "ClearType." It's used in their Reader product. For a more technical view of subpixel rendering, check out Steve Gibson's page on the matter.
Anti-aliased text in X isn't new, but subpixel rendering definitely is.
Some people have posted about the color fringes around the edges of the letters. This looks kinda weird on a CRT but the effect on an LCD is very clear. This is only really nice looking on an LCD screen, and that's what subpixel rendering is designed for.
zsazsa
If a monitor could display at 1200 dpi, it would actually be showing 1200 dots per inch, rather than 75 dpi like most current monitors. 1200 dpi is the resolution of high-quality print on paper.
Take a look inside a professionally-published magazine. The print is clear and sharp because paper can "display" with such clarity. The dots are smaller. However, if we had monitors capable of 1200 dpi display, there would be no need for anti-aliasing. Our eyes can't really even distinguish the individual dots at 1200 dpi, thus 1200 dpi text is inherently smooth and crisp to the human brain.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
#99)
> However, Windows GUI, and applications that
> run under Windows GUIs all just *work*.
> When I click a button, it does the same
> thing everywhere.
Fair enough. Such GUI has been conceived for people who can't be bothered to exercise their free will and imagination, preferring to do as a higher authority has chosen the way they should do things.
As it happens, some of us do like to exercise our free will and imagination.
Wow, I heard this EXACT same argument applied to the Windows vs MacOS flamewar in about 1994. The windows zealots were on the other side then, of course...
0 1 - just my two bits
The reason this is happening is those antialias examples use ClearType technology, which is meant for LCD screens. It "borrows" reds and greens from neighboring pixels, to make a kind of subpixel effect. But, for CRTs, it just burns your fscking eyes out. I don't know why the developer chose it this way, but he's made a goof. Idiot. Windows 98 may be evil and occult, but it uses *REGULAR* anti-aliasing. That doesn't burn your eyes out. It uses different shades of the same fscking color to produce the anti-alias effect. It's easier to read. If you look at the evolution pic, you can see in the zoom, different reds and blues are used in the anti-alias process. Now type foo in GIMP and zoom in. The GIMP uses conventional, and non-eye-incinerating antialiasing. Like I said, Cleartype may make wonders on LCDs, but on the tube that everyone plus bob has, it burns your eyes out.
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XML: Leading the way to make the web a ebiz thing
The screenshots PNG's have transparency and therefore look lousy under Netscape 4.x. To see how they really look, you'll need to use either Mozilla or a standalone image viewer.
REALLY?? Your windows apps 'just work'??
Amazing, I switched to Linux because windows 'just didnt work' most of the time.
Although I keep a partition with Win95 to play games and stuff...
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C'mon, flame me!
No sig for the moment.
I've been using "SmoothType" on my Mac for several years now, and its output is absolutely gorgeous, bordering on print quality. It can be downloaded from 'http://www.kaleidoscope.net/greg/smoothtype.html' . I've posted an example of what part of the slashdot home page looks like on my computer at ' http://www.enchanter.net/moz-smooth.png".
don't you know where you are boy! j/k -auttie
--->auttie
My question is : doesn't imlib2 has some sort of mechanism to do exactly what I saw on gnotices?
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup
Well, part of it's the usual religious bullshit. But a lot of people have legitimate concerns about how they can use GIF files or GIF software without paying royalties.
__________________
I don't use X. I don't use X because I can't stand using X. All of the window managers *suck*.
Now before you mod me down as flamebait, allow me to explain why.
I am not a big fan of microsoft. However, Windows GUI, and applications that run under Windows GUIs all just *work*. When I click a button, it does the same thing everywhere. Once you understand the UI in windnows, it's simple and clean.
Under X, even though people try to make the skins pretty, the actual UI is anything but clean. Can't we work on cleaning things up, and making the UI more reliable instead of making pretty shiny toys?
I'd love to use Linux on my desktop machine, but without a decent GUI that I can stand using, it's staying relegated to my old machine in the other room.
Ugh.
Ben Schumin :-)
I have trouble reading anti-aliased fonts; I can read them rather well, but after a while I get the strange feeling my eyes get tired. I asked a few friends and some of them have the same problem. Does someone have a clue why this is? I do by the way think anti-aliased fonts look much better than normal ones, but for the reason above, I'll stick to my normal fonts.
0x or or snor perron?!
Umm, this is pretty much pointless. Unless they implement standard Antialiasing, your eyes will be better off with out it. If you want REAL Antialiasing support, get KDE2!
You have to get a recent Xfree snapshot and compile it with a freetype2 snapshot and a patched QT (qt-copy from KDE is patched).
Then you compile everything, follow the instructions and voila, every modern QT application uses smooth fonts.
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Moritz
I went to gnotices and my browser rendered under Windows 98 SE "Connection Refused" perfectly.
Can't you read!? Oh, that's what you were saying... sorry.
Windows doesn't AA fonts until they get > 16 pts.
I've always wondered about the rationale behind this. The point of anti-aliased text, it seems, is that without it, jagged edges seem like characteristics of the actual glyph. I.e., its like walking through a forest at night - there are things which look like the path you're travelling, but aren't. When you're reading the text, your brain goes `the glyph seems to curve here', but it actually doesn't - you're just following the arrangement of the pixels.
At smaller point sizes, the size and frequency of these `false paths' increases. It would seem to me that small characters are more important to antialias than large characters. Try reading Verdana at size six antialiased and non-antialiased. AA is readable, otherwise isn't.
Anyone have any ideas? Microsoft typography generally know what they're doing, so I trust there's a rationale behind the decision. Or maybe its a technical limitation of their GDI...
Sorry .. there is no ad to the right in google ...
;)
so maybe they didn't pay enough
Samba Information HQ
If every app you run uses a different toolkit, then you're going to end up with an inconsistant desktop.
That's not the solution.
Non technical people pick their apps based on quality, not toolkit. I use Konqueror because its good, I use rp3 because its good. There's absolutely no reason why GTK and QT couldn't...
a) Use the same theming engine
b) Make sure a similar rnage of widgets is available on both platforms
c) Write a combined style guide similar to the MacOS Human Interface Guidelines for consistent application interfaces, so file -> open in Gimp looks the same as file -> open in Konq.
They already share the same drag and drop protocol, and soon they'll share MIME types.
You know, every time I see this crap, I don't like it. I even looked at TrueType, and it sucked. Nice, crsip fonts look best to me, not mushy washed out ones. Just another waste of CPU/Gfx cycles.
Sabre
SysOp Sabre's Domain
This means that an antialiased picture that looks perfect on one CRT can look horrible on another, with light or dark splotches at the edge of every shape. Don't expect an antialiased picture to look good if it hasn't been tuned for your monitor's voltage response!
(As several people have already commented, LCDs have the additional feature of different positions for red and green and blue subpixels. This allows even better antialiasing, as illustrated by ClearType, but pictures that take advantage of this will look worse on a CRT.)
Voltage response can be summarized reasonably well by a single number, called the gamma correction. Look for gamma correction options in all your graphics software. I was much happier with xdvi on my laptop, for example, after I put xdvi.gamma:1.8 into .Xresources.
In case anyone is wondering what antialiasing actually means, here's the quick-and-dirty explanation. Pretend that you have a much nicer monitor, twice the vertical resolution and twice the horizontal resolution. Then convert each two-by-two array of pixels into a single pixel by simply averaging the colors. For better results, change 2 to 10. (To change antialiasing to motion blur, change resolution to refresh rate.)
Note: This is a serious question and not a troll.
The code that allows Windows to antialias fonts appears to be in the form of a bunch of DLLs. Would it be possible to write a new DLL that uses the (obviously superior) antialiasing algorithm that's now becoming available under X?
Don't look too closely at the slashdot image.
The recursion will make your head hurt.
*(True! there's some bug in mine that every now and again makes antialiasing go up the spout, and i have to wait for the screensaver to cycle or reboot)
that is correct, THAT - IS - CORRECT! what are YOU doing?
Haven't Windows users had this since IE4 on Win98? Some progress..
Nope. Windows users have had this since Windows 95, regardless of IE version. You needed to have the Plus! pack installed, but if you didn't feel like spending the ~$30 on that, MS offered a free download to get the AA font capabilities.
So, yeah, Windows users have had this for a while now.