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Re: Big difference in antialiasing



Brian Nelson wrote:

> Richard Beri <richberi@aci.on.ca> writes:
> 
> > Does anyone else find AA fonts annoying?  I hate them, sure they "look" 
> > smoother, but I find that it just seems blurred and they are hard to 
> > read.  Makes me feel something is wrong with my eyes.  It hurts.
> 
> Amen, brother.  I've never understood the obsession with AA fonts.  They
> don't just seem blurry; they *are* blurry.

True, but at the same time, I find AA fonts far more readable than
non-AA fonts, since the purpose of the blur (as we all surely know) is
to smooth out jaggies. At large sizes, the smoothing is less necessary,
but still makes the characters look smoother, which is aesthetically
pleasing; but at very small sizes, it can make text readable that would
otherwise not be, due to excessive jagginess (assuming the display
itself is sharp enough that small text doesn't just turn into mud).

I find that looking at small non-AA text gives me a nasty eye-strain
headache after an hour or two. On MS Windows, there seems to be no
solution for this, because Windows (stupidly) only anti-aliases text
above a certain minimum size. In Gnome 2 or KDE 3, all text can be
anti-aliased, and I have found that this actually makes it possible for
me to work with smaller fonts without getting a headache. This, in turn,
makes it possible for me to use my display more efficiently by using
smaller fonts to enable me to see more at once. I consider this a good
thing.

If your mileage varies, then by all means, disable AA fonts in your
account; but recognize, please, that this is a personal preference on
your part, not a general proof that AA fonts are useless eye-candy.

Craig

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