bugFree UCS Outline Fonts - Bugs: bug #5553, No anti-aliasing in Windows apps

 
 

bug #5553: No anti-aliasing in Windows apps

Submitter:  Andre John Mas <ajmas>
Submitted:  Wed 24 Sep 2003 07:42:13 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  overall font problem Severity:  4 - Important
Item Group:  bulk text appearance poor Status:  Fixed
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  Stevan_White
Open/Closed:  Closed Release:  * pre-2005
* Mandatory Fields

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Mon 24 Mar 2008 01:50:55 PM UTC, comment #7: 

The current release fixes the problem.

In the TrueType versions, the absence of TrueType hinting tables triggers the awful appearance in Windows.  I generated such tables and included them.

But much better performance is to be had, in Vista anyway, using the OpenType fonts.

I don't know what the difference is.  I tried putting full TrueType hinting instructions in TrueType files, but that didn't work.  Maybe that plus scaling to a power of two?

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sun 16 Mar 2008 10:08:36 AM UTC, comment #6: 

Current CVS fixes this, at least in my copy of Windows Vista.

Problems still outstanding:

In the Windows font view, Sans doesn't display at all.  Nothing.  No error is reported.  Only Sans.  But I can use it in other applications.

FontForge segfaults doing an Auto-instruct.  I have worked around this by removing the ligatures, etc for Indic scripts now sitting in high Unicode.  But this needs to be remedied.

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sat 15 Mar 2008 06:10:06 PM UTC, comment #5: 

Procedure to put TrueType tables into a cubic-based font:

FIRST NOTE: the "auto instruct" command is very touchy, and FontForge will often segfault if it finds a glyph it doesn't like.

first check for any problems, and validate
save
under Font Info
        -> Layers
                click "all quadratic"
select all
auto hint
auto instruct
save sfd file as different name
open both sfd files as text
find ShortTable, TtTable (may be more than one)
      (note location)
paste into original .sfd file at the analogous location
delete any previously existing ShortTable

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Wed 12 Mar 2008 11:29:55 PM UTC, comment #4: 

Finally have a handle on this.
No longer sure if it should properly be called "anti-aliasing" or "TrueType hinting".

In Windows Vista, can switch between "ClearType" and "Standard" antialiasing. 
Control Panel -> Personalization
        -> Window Color and Appearance
                -> Effects
They are quite different, neither seems as good as the X-Windows analog, and...they don't fix the problem, only blur it.

By a process of elimination, I found the thing that produced pretty good results in Serif was TrueType tables left over from some previous experiment.

1) TTF fonts look better at smaller sizes if and only if their FontForge
   .sfd file contains TrueType hinting tables.  These look like
        ShortTable: maxp 16
        EndShort
        TtTable: prep
                ...
        EndTTInstrs
        TtTable: fpgm
                ...
        EndTTInstrs
        ShortTable: cvt  7
        EndShort

2) These don't appear to be connected to anything in the FontForge GUI when editing a font with cubic splines.

3) If the splines are changed to quadratic (Font Info -> Layers ) however, the menu items Hints -> AutoInst, etc are enabled.  These seem to use existing hints and PS Blues values to produce TrueType hinting instructions.

4) The TrueType tables aren't deleted if the splines are changed back to cubic.  (But they surely lose any connection to any later changes made to glyphs.)

5) To AutoInst, requires glyphs to be TrueType conformant already, so can't have mixed contours and references in one glyph, for example.  (Also saw problems when Validate turned up poor Blues values.)

6) How badly does two transformations of spline order screw up glyphs?  Don't know.  But it isn't a perfect transformation.  Just going one way always causes trouble.

7) Can the tables be simply copied from a cubic version to a quadratic?  Yes.

8) Of course this could all be avoided by just switching to OpenType, but some important apps still don't support that.

So for now:  I'm making quadratic spline versions of each font, copying the TrueType tables by hand to the cubic spline versions, and saving it.  It's a hack.

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Sun 17 Feb 2008 03:29:34 PM UTC, comment #3: 

Michal Nowakowski in mail to -email is unavailable-

Thought it must be

Font Info -> Grid Fitting
Must end with 65535
Each entry applies to all font sizes larger than the entry Pixels Per EM,
but smaller than that of the next entry
For compliance with old versions, use version 0
See http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/fontinfo.html

But...I tried every combination.  I went so far as to look at Times New Roman, and make it look the same.

No luck.  It's something else, I guess.

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Fri 15 Feb 2008 09:39:39 PM UTC, comment #2: 

Did some experiments in Windows.

Discovery 1:  PuTTY has an "Anti-Alias" checkbox.
When checked, FreeMono looks great.

So it would appear that the problem is, that FreeFont .ttf files are being interpreted as fonts not to be antialiased by Windows.

But how to change this?

Discovery 2:  The OpenType .otf files produced by FontForge do not have this problem.  They are anti-aliased.

Discovery 3: Even when antialiased, FreeSerif looks poor, but mostly due to horizontal spacing problems.

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Thu 14 Feb 2008 10:58:42 PM UTC, comment #1: 

Andre,

I can confirm that all the FreeFonts look awful in all Windows apps I tried them in.  This includes

gvim
PuTTY
Crimson Editor
WordPad
Opera

At 9pt they're unreadable, at 12pt they are very ugly.  They look like bitmapped fonts being scaled badly.  What does it mean?

Ideas:

  • hinting
  • some other overall font setting


Also:  Windows Vista uses mostly OpenType.  What about the Mac?  Is it time to switch from TrueType to OpenType?

Steve White <Stevan_White>
Group administrator
Wed 24 Sep 2003 07:42:13 PM UTC, original submission:  

I have installed the Free UCS fonts on Windows 2000 and I then tried selecting the FreeMono font. I was planning to use the font at 10 point, but what I see, in the preview pane, looks like the output of a printer without enough ink. It is only around 20 point does the font starting looking viewable. Even then the characters look rough. The application I wanted to use them with was Eclipse, but because the font is not viewable at small sizes, I am will keep to Courier, for console output, for the moment.

Andre John Mas <ajmas>

 

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Carbon-Copy List
  • -email is unavailable- added by Stevan_White (Andre John Mas)
  • -email is unavailable- added by Stevan_White (Updated the item)
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    Follow 14 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2008-03-24 Stevan_White Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2008-03-24 Stevan_White Carbon-Copy- Added ajmas
    2008-03-16 Stevan_White StatusProceeding Fixed
    2008-02-15 Stevan_White SummaryCharacters deformed in Windows apps No anti-aliasing in Windows apps
    2008-02-14 Stevan_White CategoryNone overall font problem
        Item Groupglyph(s) ugly bulk text appearance poor
    2008-02-14 Stevan_White Severity3 - Normal 4 - Important
        Item Groupbulk text appearance poor glyph(s) ugly
    2008-02-14 Stevan_White SummaryCharacters deformed Characters deformed in Windows apps
    2008-02-09 Stevan_White Item GroupNone bulk text appearance poor
        Assigned topeterlin Stevan_White
        ReleaseNone pre-2005
    2005-04-13 peterlin StatusNone Proceeding
        Assigned toNone peterlin

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