Desktops

[Q Classic]

in order, how it looks in:
windows xp/office 2003 + cleartype
mac osx 10.3/office 2001 + quartz
kde 3.2.1/abiword 2.0.5 + sub-pixel hinting anti-aliasing for fonts.

[Q Classic]

forgot to attach it.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
So MS took someone else's idea and used it for fonts.

It is not somebody else's idea. Sub-pixel rendering was not mentioned anywhere in Apple's patent, nor is it in any way similar to the RGB techniques used in ClearType.

This whole "Apple did it first" crap comes from Steve Gibson, the notorious moron and attention whore. What Apple did was **** with a specific NTSC quirk to effectively double horizontal resolution, and that's IT. Are you saying that any time somebody creates an optical illusion on a PC monitor they stole the idea from Apple...?

You're a joke Asher. Of course you are a fraud. One need only remind oneself of your Fitts' Law flip flops among other things. I'm guessing you still believe it's a mathematical law?

Fitts' law is undeniably a mathematical law, given that it is a formula...

And you ****ing did say that M$ invented Expose, or at least that Expose was a "ripoff" of M$ technology. You started a thread on it, in which it was pointed out to you that your "evidence" wasn't sufficient to justify your claim.

I certainly did not -- though I did mention some of the functionality introduced in Expose existed since Windows 95 (namely, minimize all windows). And similar "zoomable windows" and whatnot have existed since the late 90s at research.microsoft.com

NB: that pic of Apple's font antialiasing is of a Carbon app (Word) - true native OS X apps (Cocoa) seem slightly better than that to me. In any case, the Apple font smoothing is clearly superior in your example.

Carbon and Cocoa have nothing to do with font anti-aliasing. This is clear example of psychology affecting your perception.

I would definitely disagree that Apple's seems clearer -- they've bolded the fonts to make the font edges larger, and they've blurred it adding an upper "halo" to the font which annoys me. MS' technique doesn't bold it, nor does it blur it, which makes it superior IMO.

Font anti-aliasing is about accurately reproducing the original font, minus the jaggies. Apple changes it to a bolder font and adds a halo.

+ M$'s font smoothing when it does work well tends to distort the fonts so as to fail to provide true WYSIWYG when it comes to printing.

This doesn't even make sense? All font anti-aliasing using sub-pixel rendering has no bearing on printed quality. Further, since Apple uses a slight blurring and bolding technique, I'd imagine it's the other way around if anything -- that Apple's fonts appear more bold on the screen than when printed.

[Asher]

Zoomed in images of Apple's bluring (left) vs ClearType (right):

Generally, Quartz seems to raster fonts unnecessarily thick so it can apply what looks like a pseudo-sloppy, Gaussian blur filter resulting in fuzzy "halo" looking text. Now at larger sizes, this may make some sense, but on the smaller fonts (14 Point and smaller) it seems to decrease legibility. Fonts at small sizes particularly benefit from increased resolution, and ClearType seems to excel beyond Quartz in "creating" usable sub-pixel resolution by applying anti-aliasing more discriminately and not over-blurring the results. Perhaps a pseudo MultipleMaster's approach to sub-pixel rastering might be more optimal, where the "halo" effect is reduced for fonts at smaller sizes and increased at larger sizes.

So why did Apple implement a "halo" anti-aliasing model (when ClearType and Adobe's Acrobat text anti-aliasing seem more exacting)? The answer may lie in patents over the technology. If Apple cannot obtain a license on Microsoft's low resolution (i.e., small font size) sub-pixel rendering techniques, then we may simply have to wait until April 10, 2020 (when Microsoft's patent runs out).

[Q Classic]

or apple could go open source and ask to import kde's methods, whose clarity can be seen in the third sample shown above.

[Spiffor]

In Q^3's pic, it's KDE I prefer the most, and Mac I prefer the least. I like it when my chars are very clear, even if that must mean some pixels are visible. Blurry chars are really not a treat for my eyes.

[Asher]

Just because we're all already gathered together here.

http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5173115.html?tag=nefd_top

Apple Computer said Monday that it has sold 50 million songs through its iTunes Music Store--a substantial number but far below its goal of selling 100 million songs by April.

I remember certain people here laughing at me being skeptical that they could hit 100M by April. I was told it was guaranteed, if not substantially more than 100M.

Welcome to the real world.

[BustaMike]

That's because ordering a 99 cent mp3 over the internet is retarded. I'd much rather just go buy the CD and get a physical copy with case and booklet at a higher quality.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Asher

Fitts' law is undeniably a mathematical law, given that it is a formula...

Obviously you have a bizarre understanding of what a mathematical law is. Any proposition which is dependent on empirical evidence for its truth is for that reason not a mathematical law.

[Agathon]

The kde one looks best in your pic Q3. The Windows one the worst, in my view.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
Obviously you have a bizarre understanding of what a mathematical law is. Any proposition which is dependent on empirical evidence for its truth is for that reason not a mathematical law.

This is Fitts' Law:

MT = a + b log₂(2A/W)

where:
MT = movement time
a,b = regression coefficients
A = distance of movement from start to target center
W = width of target

You know damn well what I mean when I said it was a mathematical law. Obviously it is not a law that governs mathematics, but is a law that IS a mathematical formula.

The original point was it in no way says that, say, having a single title bar at the top is more efficient than having them attached to each window they control, which was your ridiculous assertion. You got this crazy idea from a website which made an incorrect corollary from this, and kept prancing around citing "Fitts' law says it's better..."

[Method]

/me coughs

desktops

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
The kde one looks best in your pic Q3. The Windows one the worst, in my view.

Of course you think it looks worse, you've clearly no sense of anything we're talking about here. Hell, you think Plex and the Finder UI look so similar to the point of accusing MS of ripping it off.

You're out to lunch, man.

[Drake Tungsten]

I agree with Aggie. KDE > Mac > Windows.

[Q Classic]

i suppose this merely emboldens the claims of linux superiority over windows and mac.

but seriously, arguing about font smoothing? all three of them do a good enough job for me, and i don't really care to spend too much time trying to notice the differences.

all of them are pretty smooth, and that's just dandy by me.