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.
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)....
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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.
Wow... it's so shiny....
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but will it make it anti-biased?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
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.
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.
You mean here.
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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.
Text of this sort is called "aliased", for reasons which escape me.
It is called aliased because of the boundary effects. In essence, when a glyph is rasterised for display without anti-aliasing, a binary decision is made as to whether or not a given pixel is on, depending on how much of the pixel would be filled if the screen were of infinite resolution. This causes an effect called aliasing, where the boundary of the glyph is not in the same place in the theoretical infinite resolution raster and the real screen (printer, whatever) resolution. The boundary of the glyph is aliased to the boundary of the pixel.
With anti-aliasing, the intensity of a pixel is a function of how much of the pixel is covered by the glyph being rasterised. For mid-to-large size fonts, this results in a much improved visual appearance, since, to the eye, the boundaries appear to be where they would be with a screen of much higher resolution. For small font sizes, anti-aliasing usually blurs the gylph beyond recognition.
Antialiasing basically means blending the edges - not so bad that things appear "blurry", just that they have smoother blends from one edge to the next. Fonts are usually the easiest to appreciate - they look finer, more distinct, as opposed to blocky and pixelated. They're smoother, easier on the eyes.
What's your damage, Heather?
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).
Well, All systems use a few standardized fonts like Verdana, Arial, Heveltica, etc... Sometimes these fonts will try and get sneaky and change their names to something like Deep Throat, Professor X, or Batman so that when you open up Microsoft Word, you won't know where your favorite font is. Anti-Aliasing is a method to keep your fonts from changing their names without your consent.
It means they look nicer and take longer to draw, unless your gfx card does it for free. That's about it.
The bravado is because X has absolutely no support whatsoever for antialiased fonts, and deliberately makes it difficult for the toolkit writer.
Does my bum look big in this?
The patch is available here
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.
Definitions:
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.
Anti-aliasing only uses shades of the same color. What Evolution is doing looks like my first AA line (got the shading wrong, ended up with lots of pretty colors ;) Somebody said it had something to do with a ClearType-type technology, so maybe that's it.
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