Re: solved: emacs: ugly characters

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

lee <lee@yun.yagibdah.de> writes:
> Isn't ant-aliasing supposed to make fonts more pretty and easier to read
> instead of messing them up and making them very straining for the eyes?

It generally does, but like anything, YMMV.  Anti-aliasing parameters
can have a big effect on the final look (e.g., subpixel rendering
vs. gray-scale-only; "cleartype"-style grid-snapping vs. apple-style
"fuzzy", etc), and in the end, it's personal preference -- some people
prefer the "crisp" look of traditional fonts, others prefer the
"smooth" look of anti-aliased fonts.  Sometimes it just depends on the
particular font and circumstance, not any general rule.

I generally like anti-aliased fonts better, but with the font
anti-aliasing settings tweaked to make them look more contrasty and
crisper than the default settings (I use the gnome font-preferences
widget to change them).  Two important things:  (1) use "high contrast
/ light" mode, which tries to make character stems etc exactly one
pixel wide (even if it means slightly distorting [usually
unnoticeably] the character shape/weight), and (2) if you have an LCD,
turn on sub-pixel rendering, which often allows the font-renderer to
do a better job.

-Miles

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