Time for X12?

Posted Apr 4, 2003 13:40 UTC (Fri) by IkeTo (subscriber, #2122) [Link]

> best fonts are really the non-anti-aliased bitmap fonts
> which were hand-crafted at the resolution you're using.
> It's just for applications which want a range of fonts,
> sizes, and effects that scaled anti-aliased fonts make
> sense.

Definitely not the case. Antialiasing is needed whether or not your fonts are tuned to a particular number of pixels. It fixes one primary issue: the screen resolution is far from enough for human not to notice the artifacts. When the screen shows you a slash, you see a staircase instead. The problem is there unless your screen resolution is in the order of 1200dpi, which for a regular notebook screen it is something like 14000x10000 resolution. Until that kind of resolution becomes available at low cost, anti-aliasing reduces the problem by changing pixels that should be partially filled to a color partially black. The actual improvement is within the brain, not on the paper or any physical phenomenon. The brain process the greyscales into in indication that the character is smooth. If you enlarge it you'll find the character not as clear as a carefully engineered character, but at a reading distance you perceive a better quality character.

Even the printers use such techniques: larger and smaller dots at the edges and corners of the characters it prints improve dramatically the perceived beauty of the fonts. And we are talking about 600dpi there. Screen fonts are definitely not an exception.