Author Topic: ClearType or no ClearType?  (Read 10758 times)

Zakamiro

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Re: ClearType or no ClearType?
« Reply #15 on: November 27, 2007, 09:43:57 AM »
I may or may not have this enabled. But it looks all clear to me. I don't like anti-aliased text that much. I LIKE MY SMALL TEXT PIXEY SO I CAN READ IT AND NOT HAVING TO FUCK WITH GRAY PIXELS THAT BLUR WHAT IM TRYING TO READ. So yeah, idk. looks good to me stock. xD

same monitor as bobbias', and even on my other one, a 1024x768 HP. Phuck ya.


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Bobbias

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Re: ClearType or no ClearType?
« Reply #16 on: November 27, 2007, 10:04:56 AM »
Well, I didn't mind the normal stuff, which, by the way, was anti-aliased to begin with. However, they just upped the accuracy of anti-aliasing to sub-pixels, which does actually improve how it looks. It does seem to be "blurry" when you're not adjusted to seeing it that way, but I actually much prefer ClearType, now that I have it on. It does in fact improve the readability for me. Sadly(?) enough, ClearType doe not affect other language fonts, like japanese, which means that you can see a clear difference between them.

Here's an example of my music folder, which happens to have a LOT of folders with japanese in them.
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Zakamiro

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Re: ClearType or no ClearType?
« Reply #17 on: November 28, 2007, 06:31:47 AM »
I actually like not having cleartype. The shading looks like blur almost, meh. I've seen the windows install screen talk about it, but what I thought it did was the opposite, instead of just displaying text willy-nilly over pixels, it would pick the right pixels to show as black to make it clear. This makes a hell of a lot more sense to me. Contrast is clear, antialiasing and shading isnt.


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Bobbias

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Re: ClearType or no ClearType?
« Reply #18 on: November 28, 2007, 06:53:49 AM »
Anti-aliasing is meant to smooth over edges, and simulate a higher resolution. If you haven't noticed, some of those kanji over there are kind hard to read. I found that after getting used to the appearance of blur, the text was actually more readable, and more pleasant to the eyes. ClearType is designed to make things follow the "hinting" of the letter even more clearly, so that the letter looks as close as it can get to the original design specifications. When you scrunch a letter up really small, sometimes parts of the letter become obscure due to the lack of pixels in which to define the letter, ClearType was designed to help get around this issue by allowing partial pixels to be manipulated to make the letters slightly more clear on extremely low resolution screens, like PDAs and such. However, it also looks better on any LCD monitor, generally, because it follows the design specifications for the font better. It's effect is lessened at higher resolution, but I find that because of the softer "blur" effect that it gives the letters, large portions of text are actually easier to read. Contrast is definitely part of it, but too much contrast and things are harder on the eyes. LCD screens are higher contrast than CRT displays anyway.
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Spectere

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Re: ClearType or no ClearType?
« Reply #19 on: November 29, 2007, 03:44:04 AM »
The effect really isn't lessened at all on high resolution displays, actually.

My laptop has a high resolution screen (17" widescreen, 1920x1200) and turning off ClearType actually degrades readability.  The lack of hinting makes each individual letter harder to make out due to the perceived horizontal resolution being lower.  For example, in the Appearance tab in the Display control panel applet, the "Effects" was borderline hard to read without ClearType -- the 'f' characters in particular had the appearance of running together.  With ClearType enabled, they don't.  The main reason they do so without ClearType is likely due to the width of the character.  With the default font, it's 2 pixels wide.  With ClearType enabled, the 'f' characters appear to be 3 pixels wide, giving them a bolder, more distinct look thanks to the simulated, tripled horizontal resolution.

Now on my system at home (19" LCD at 1280x1024 and a 17" Trinitron CRT at 1280x960) it doesn't make as much of a difference.  On my lappy, subpixel hinting makes such a high resolution on such a small screen viable.
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Bobbias

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Re: ClearType or no ClearType?
« Reply #20 on: November 29, 2007, 07:13:36 AM »
Wow, 1920x1200, intense.

Yeah, I have come to really enjoy ClearType.
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