Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

quillaja — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:23:45 GMT

Interesting article.

However, I was wondering why you didn't make the device independent pixel so that 1 DIP = 0.01 inch(or cm). I assume this is because Windows is classically "stuck" at a 96 DPI setting. But didn't the switch to WPF and all that goodness give you a chance to re-align your units to something that makes more sense in day-to-day life?

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

FreakyT — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:05:27 GMT

Good article!

I just wish there were a way to force all GDI text rendering to use the new font rendering for advanced users who want it (maybe a registry tweak?) Personally, a few visual glitches here and there would be worth the better-looking text.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

oadrian — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:14:56 GMT

That's because 96 is a magic number. 96 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, etc. It means it's much less likely you'll have to go into fractional parts.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

someone — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:43:40 GMT

1. I'm excited that Direct2D and DirectWrite will be available on Vista as well!

2. It would have been more awesome if large parts of the OS (esp text input boxes) which currently use GDI/Uniscribe could use DirectWrite.

3. Windows 7 needs to ship with an option to use Tahoma everywhere instead of Segoe UI for those still with CRT monitors. On CRTs, even with ClearType and font smoothing turned off, Windows 7 looks blurred, though not as bad as Vista. Otherwise, the new OS becomes effectively unusable for the CRT using crowd.

4. Why is WordPad not using DirectWrite functionality? Is it not showcasing your platform technology with applets? It's also a perfect fit for customers of WordPad.

5. I hope Word 14 will support all of this functionality, it's now or never.

6. Please update the common "Choose fonts" dialog throughout the OS and Character Map.

Take a look here: http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:DGK1Q4TftE8J:www.hopelessgeek.com/2003/10/24/panthers-major-text-services-upgrade+Panther+Typography+overhauled&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

pepkaro — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:57:10 GMT

Fantastic look, thank you. It's nice to see that the internals are advancing even with all the flash and shiny on the outside. I'm looking forward to the day when I have a super crisp LCD at 600 dpi on my monitor, and not having to scrunch my eyes. :)

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

BryanKinkel — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:58:43 GMT

"The Windows native graphics system has not fully embraced OpenType for its mainstream usage of text. "

How true. Anyone trying to render an OpenType font with Postscript tables using .NET & GDI+ is in for a rude surprise. I hope that MS eventually adds full OpenType support to the GDI+ layer for .NET/C# developers who choose to use WinForms (rather than WPF) in their applications.

But all the news in this article is a win for typography enthusists. Thank you for paying attention to fonts in Windows 7.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

joewoodbury — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:29:14 GMT

Just please remember that not everyone likes ClearType. It drives me batty, even on LCD screens.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Tihiy — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:44:52 GMT

> 3. Windows 7 needs to ship with an option to use Tahoma everywhere instead of Segoe UI for those still with CRT monitors. On CRTs, even with ClearType and font smoothing turned off, Windows 7 looks blurred, though not as bad as Vista. Otherwise, the new OS becomes effectively unusable for the CRT using crowd.

+1! Although it can be replaced via appearance settings, it still not right everywhere.

And ClearType-7 is really making things hard to read not only on CRTs, but on cheap LCDs too (which are, i think, office majority).

You do care about corporate users, right? Care about their eyes too, please.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Mike Williams — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:24:20 GMT

It's a pity that with all these advances the text/background contrast levels in Windows 7 are even worse than in Vista.

Worst of all is Windows Media Player 12, which has grey text on blue on blue and no way to adjust the size or colour. If you don't have the visual acuity of a peregrine falcon it can be difficult to even perceive which text is selected and which is not, because the difference between them is like adjacent fields on a Pantone chart.

However don't bother bugging any of these issues in Windows 7, because they're all BY DESIGN.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

marcinw — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:00:02 GMT

my 2 cents: I agree with opinion, that old menu fonts (used in XP) + old ClearType tweaker (available for XP) were much better than these available in Vista/7.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Tanveer Badar — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:20:08 GMT

"Another pleasant design of the original ClearType in Windows was that it has improved the clarity of text without breaking application compatibility – that is, it doesn’t change the actual size of each individual glyph in either direction, nor did it change the distance between the two adjacent ones."

But the pictures contradict last sentence. Windows 7 rendering spans longer horizontal distance, perhaps vertical too but it is not evident from them clearly.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

barth2k — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:22:19 GMT

I'm so glad this subject was brought up because it is a major issue for me.

I have 20/200 (left eye) 20/100 (right eye) vision. Not low vision, per se, but far from perfect. Starting from Vista, I found Windows text rendering very hard on me. It may be aesthetic pleasing to look at -- until I actually try to read it.

I hate Cleartype, even on my LCD monitor. I guess the reason is I use larger DPI and larger text than most people, and text just looks horrible that way. I don't understand how having color fringes makes it easier to read text. It's like looking at a 3 tube CRT with convergence problem. (Yes, I've used the cleartype tuner til my eyes bleed; it still looks horrible, particularly with white text on dark background).

So I've always use "standard font smoothing" in XP. It looks good on small or large text, black on white or white on black back/foreground combination. Vista/7 took away this option, but i found I can get it back by editing the registry, by setting hkcu\controlpanel\desktop\fontsmoothing to 2 and fontsmoothingtype to 0.

But somehow,it still does not look the same as in XP. Switching back in XP, I just feel RELIEVED. Text looks dark and crisp. In 7, text looks grayish and blurry.

Note that I'm using the exact same video card, monitor, driver version, DPI, and fonts.

Looking closely, what I see is some blue fringing even when I use the above settings. Note that setting fontsmoothing to 1 appears to disable it altogether and I get jagged edges, which don't look good either. When I hit winkey & + to zoom in, I don't see the blue fringe but notice that there's more gray in the text than in XP. In XP, the gray stays on the edges to help smooth the edges. In 7, the grays "encroach" inside the text itself. On some letters, there's more gray than black. It's as if the anti-aliasing is over-aggressive.

I don't really understand what's happening here. I just want to ask you to consider people with CRT and people with poor vision. Give us an "XP-style" font smoothing. The new way may be better for some, even most, but not for everyone.

At this point, I fear I may be stuck in XP indefinitely.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

anonymuos — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:54:40 GMT

It's impossible to continue using the computer running an OS which hurts the eyes. Apparently a large number of users are affected by this since Vista but MS won't do anything as "This behavior is by design."

I bet it's still not enabled on a per monitor basis

Syllopsium — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:36:49 GMT

Cleartype only works on a subset on TFT monitors. You're stuffed if you run both CRT monitors and TFT monitors on the same system as it's not enabled on a per monitor basis..

Still, I hadn't actually noticed any major problems with font rendering either on my test desktop or laptop straight away, so the default can't be that bad.

Mind you, I'm fully aware that no-one cares about the dying breed of CRT monitors.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

swythan — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:33:42 GMT

Will WPF support for these new typography improvements? (either by using DirectWrite, or some other way)

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

bakinnan — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:27:20 GMT

I link the changes that were made to the font ui, but one thing that is missing is the need for non-admins to install fonts. In a publishing house it makes it difficult to have non-admin users on machines when one user can go through hundreds, if not thousands of fonts a year.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

barth2k — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:15:57 GMT

every Vista PC or laptop I've seen has been on LCD monitor, and they all have the same grayish blurry look and terrible color fringing. I don't get it. If I see that with my poor eyes, what are people with 20/20 vision seeing and why doesn't it bother them? I guess they just think that's how it's supposed to be. It's like with food. People eat something too salty or sour but they think that's how the dish is supposed to be so they're ok with it.

DRM

tryon — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:02:08 GMT

what about DRM issues on w7?

I just read a news on http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/16/2259257 and was very shocked at what I read:

"With regard to media files, the days of capturing an audio program on your PC seem to be over (if the program originated on that PC). The inputs of your sound card are severely degraded in software if the card is also playing an audio program (tested here with Grooveshark). "

and it g oes on and on ...

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

kmenzel — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:20:43 GMT

All of these comments about bluriness on LCDs, or even on CRTs kind of makes me wonder - are people actually using their displays at the native resolution? Cleartype is only really designed to be used at the native resolution of an LCD device... CRTs also have somewhat a "native resolution", which has to do with the dot-pitch of the device - so for instance, my IBM E74 CRT monitor doesn't exactly have pretty looking fonts at even it's reported max resolution, but (semi-hacked) to achieve 1280x1024 resolution, cleartype fonts look great...

I know someone especially mentioned "cheap office LCDs"... and having worked as a temp in a few offices, it seems to me that most places I work, everyone had the resolution set MUCH LOWER than native, which to me made EVERYTHING look terrible...

Also, I believe that cleartype in windows 7 is tunable per-monitor? Though not on/off per se?

Also - as people have mentioned... Office 14 as well as something like wordpad supporting all this cool opentype stuff would be fantastic...

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

kmenzel — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:35:45 GMT

@ tryon - the slashdot post doesn't even point to an article... so... I'm not exactly sure how trustworthy the source is...

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

barth2k — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:19:54 GMT

@kmenzel: yes i've run in both native and lower rez, and most new systems I see at the store run at native. And yes, I've wasted hours fiddling with the cleartype tuner, to no avail.

My LCD happens to be one of the more expensive panels. But I'm using 125% DPI and larger fonts.

Please just let me have the old standard font smoothing of XP as an option. Maybe that's not even possible now with the new renderer.

The odd thing is it's not even consistent. Compare, for ex, these two captures

http://img183.imageshack.us/my.php?image=opencsda1.png

http://img183.imageshack.us/my.php?image=leftpanecx9.png

one is from the CD insertion popup, the other from the left pane in Explorer

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

kmenzel — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:11:58 GMT

That is odd... :) I also find it odd that the text in the pictures you posted doesn't look nearly as sharp as the text on my computer... even when I adjust my dpi... hmm... I have extensively tuned cleartype on my system though...

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

cavit — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:18:48 GMT

@barth2k: Your first capture shows that you have ClearType set up for a BGR monitor instead of an RGB monitor. When you zoom in on your capture, the left side of black letters appears blueish, while normally (for RGB) the right side is blueish. Most people have an RGB monitor, so for them (and for me) your text appears blurry and has color fringing.

Maybe you actually have a BGR monitor? Have a look at Microsoft’s test image

http://img.microsoft.com/typography/faq/brg.gif

to see what works best.

The second capture you posted shows text with grayscale antialiasing, which occurs when you use a PostScript font (in your case probably Helvetica). As far as I know, ClearType is not applied to PostScript fonts.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

kmenzel — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:27:56 GMT

@cavit - good catch on the PostScript font thing, I hadn't realised that before...

Is there an explination as to why ClearType won't work with fonts that use PostScript outlines? It seems like most of the fonts people pay money for use PostScript outlines (The Adobe fonts for instance)... it would probably be beneficial to get cleartype working with PostScript fonts...

So the question is, to Microsoft:

a) Does Natural ClearType work with fonts that have PostScript outlines?

b) Will Office 14 be able to use Natural ClearType?

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

kmenzel — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:33:32 GMT

@cavit - good catch on the PostScript font thing, I hadn't realised that before...

So the question is, to Microsoft:

a) Does Natural ClearType work with fonts that have PostScript outlines?

b) Will Office 14 be able to use Natural ClearType?

c) Would it at all be possible to enable Natural ClearType in older applications via some sort of "compatibility mode" switch? It would be pretty awesome if the old API calls could be translated to the new APIs...

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

barth2k — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:51:35 GMT

@cavit: I looked at the picture and in one the blue is on the left and on the other the blue is on the right. Maybe RGB looks better but I don't like either one much.

at any rate, I have cleartype turned off (when I run the tuner, the box is unchecked). My FontSmoothingOrientation is 0, FontSmoothingType is 1, which should disable cleartype, yet I still see it in non-ps fonts.

Thank you for the tip. I guess I should try to use postscript fonts wherever possible. Unfortunately, segoe UI is used a lot throughout the UI and I can't change it besides what's exposed in the 'change fonts and metrics' dialog. I tried regediting fontsubstitutes and substitute "Segoe UI" and "Segoe UI Light" but it doesn't work.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Mantvydas — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:27:26 GMT

1) If you're including that many fonts into Windows, just don't forget to make them as international as Windows itself. There's nothing more annoying for an international user than choosing a nice looking font for a christmas card, and finding out that some of the characters just can't be shown in that font.

2) There always such a rumour existed, that "the more fonts there are in Windows, the slower Windows starts". I hope you have addressed that.

3) In Windows 7 Beta, there is no "Install font" (at least I couldn't find it). Is copying into a Fonts folder enough?

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

kmenzel — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:18:59 GMT

@Mantvydas (3)

Copying into the fonts folder is how you install fonts in Windows 7 - this replaced the old "Install Fonts" dialog that hadn't changed since Windows 3.1 or something...

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Mike Williams — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:16:07 GMT

Windows has had drag-and-drop install into the Fonts folder for a long time.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

mludwig — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:20:44 GMT

A possible bug:

Scrolling the help sometimes makes double or missing pixel lines in the text. The fonts are distorted and appear shorter or taller.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

faramond — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:38:23 GMT

Please make sure that all of these advances make it into Word and Publisher! We need multiple weights and ligatures much more in those programs than in Notepad.

However, adding nice text rendering to Word will be a waste if the line-breaking and justification algorithms are not improved. Subpixel glyph rendering will still look awful if the spaces between letters and words are still huge and irregular.

.NET Framework

Saad — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:34:36 GMT

Please write about .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 impress on Windows 7. Will be .NET framework 4 release mid Windows 7 release version? what will be new efficacy of .NET 4 for windows?

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Xenan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:28:50 GMT

But why is the virtual pixel defined as 1/96th of an inch? This is approx 0.26458333... millimeter, so you start right off with a rounding error.

For example, in MS Word when I place something at lets say 7 cm, it often jumps to 6.99 or 7.01 cm, which I think its rather ridiculous. A round number should always stay a round number.

And the virtual pixel is maybe too big as well as most moderne monitors have a resolution of 120 dpi or more.

It would be better to define the virual pixel as 0.1 millimeter. It more future proof.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

vrioux — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:22:26 GMT

There is much more you can do to enhance Cleartype. One simple but effective thing would be to calculate a per-word "sub-pixel alignment" to check and determine which of the 3 colors should be used as the "root" of the word (top-left corner or the "word-bitmap").

That way, if a word contains a lot of 'l', you can try and align the word so none look blurry as they now do on XP, 7 and Vista. The cause of this is that sometimes, the letter has to be placed in such a sub-pixel way that many subpixels are used on a vertical axis. As Cleartype is best for curves and diagonals, the vertical line is vulnerable to blur.

Another thing is that LCD technologies (MVA, TFT, etc.) are not equal. Some have bigger inter-pixel spacing, adding more width to a letter when subpixel rendering is used. This is why many LCD users "hate Cleartype". I have seen this on many occasions. One way to get around this problem is to simply tweak the subpixel rendering algorithm to take into consideration these differences by using the PnP Monitor driver (or EDID information) to query an online MS-based database.

If you do these two simple adjustments, you'll have not only found more marketing arguments, but also true real advances in Cleartype technology.

Ideas are everywhere for font rendering. We only need to take a look at it from a different angle.

Vincent Rioux

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

vrioux — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:56:10 GMT

You might want to take a look at SubLCD also. It shows how Cleartype-like technology could help with picture rendering. Bring on the very-high-res icons in 7!

http://www.oyhus.no/SubLCD.html

Vincent

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Urvabara — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:31:11 GMT

Please, update your font format so that it can handle well over 100,000 characters/glyphs.

"Currently (August, 2008), no single "Unicode font" includes all the characters defined in the present revision of the ISO 10646 (Unicode) standard. In fact, it would be impossible to create such a font in any common font format, as Unicode includes over 100,000 characters, while no widely-used font format supports more than 65,535 glyphs. So while one could make a set of related fonts to cover all of Unicode, a single Unicode font is not possible at this time."

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

hedges — Sun, 10 May 2009 02:08:41 GMT

thats a great news.

More font more fun

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

illiarian — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:42:07 GMT

Text Rasterization Exposures:

http://antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.html

An article detailing how to do fonts right. It's nice to see Windows finally slowly approaching that

bachelor degree

jackiboa — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:26:34 GMT

Some have bigger inter-pixel spacing, adding more width to a letter when subpixel rendering is used. This is why many LCD users "hate Cleartype". I have seen this on many occasions. One way to get around this problem is to simply tweak the subpixel rendering algorithm to take into consideration these differences by using the PnP Monitor driver (or EDID information) to query an online MS-based database.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

jackiboa — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:28:18 GMT

I don't get it. If I see that with my poor eyes, what are people with 20/20 vision seeing and why doesn't it bother them? I guess they just think that's how it's supposed to be.<a href="http://www.mustuniversity.com/">Online Degree</a> It's like with food. People eat something too salty or sour but they think that's how the dish is supposed to be so they're ok with it.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Online Animation degree — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:13:14 GMT

This is why many LCD users "hate Cleartype". I have seen this on many occasions. One way to get around this problem is to simply tweak the subpixel rendering algorithm to take into consideration these differences by using the PnP Monitor driver (or EDID information) to query an online MS-based database.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Online Marketing degree — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:15:43 GMT

it would be impossible to create such a font in any common font format, as Unicode includes over 100,000 characters, while no widely-used font format supports more than 65,535 glyphs. So while one could make a set of related fonts to cover all of Unicode, a single Unicode font is not possible at this time."

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

management degree — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:17:46 GMT

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Public Administration Degree — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:19:23 GMT

I guess I should try to use postscript fonts wherever possible. Unfortunately, segoe UI is used a lot throughout the UI and I can't change it besides what's exposed in the 'change fonts and metrics' dialog. I tried regediting fontsubstitutes and substitute "Segoe UI" and "Segoe UI Light" but it doesn't work.

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

Online Engineering school — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:20:41 GMT

the slashdot post doesn't even point to an article... so... I'm not exactly sure how trustworthy the source is...

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

cash gifting — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:22:56 GMT

there are so many updates and advances in windows 7 its hard for anyone to ignore this elite operating system

re: Advances in typography and text rendering in Windows 7

cash gifting — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:32:48 GMT

overall very happy with its performance