Font scaling and font smoothing
Posted: Sun Feb 29, 2004 8:13 pm
Before I delved into the FCP, I had always thought fonts were actually bitmaps - really, really big bitmaps - but bitmaps that then were scaled down to smaller sizes. Now I know better, but it brings an important question to mind.
The thing is, running Windows XP with the font smoothing turned on, almost any font looks pretty decent, but as a software developer keeping in mind that most Windows users are still viewing their fonts in a binary / pixellated format, I've turned off the font smoothing and it's a whole other story with most fonts when you see them sans smoothing.
Even with font smoothing off, once again, the Microsoft fonts like good ol' Ariel, Verdana and Tahoma, they still look perfect when they're scaled down to smaller sizes, however almost every other font in my collection has some problems at the small sizes.
I read an interesting thread here suggesting the 2048 units per em, but is there more to it than just that? Do the font designers at Microsoft know things like how wide to make an "o" so it translates perfectly symmetrically down to 8 pt. size? I have thousands of other fonts and they look good at a large size, but take them down to a very small size and you see it scales down kind of randomly and it's just not very appealing to look at.
Because when you come down to it, these glyphs really do become bitmaps, right? With the font shading off, with no anti-aliasing, all the fonts are really reduced to a two-color bitmap. Is there some magic formula that allows you to be totally in control of how your big glyph scales down into that bitmap?
The thing is, running Windows XP with the font smoothing turned on, almost any font looks pretty decent, but as a software developer keeping in mind that most Windows users are still viewing their fonts in a binary / pixellated format, I've turned off the font smoothing and it's a whole other story with most fonts when you see them sans smoothing.
Even with font smoothing off, once again, the Microsoft fonts like good ol' Ariel, Verdana and Tahoma, they still look perfect when they're scaled down to smaller sizes, however almost every other font in my collection has some problems at the small sizes.
I read an interesting thread here suggesting the 2048 units per em, but is there more to it than just that? Do the font designers at Microsoft know things like how wide to make an "o" so it translates perfectly symmetrically down to 8 pt. size? I have thousands of other fonts and they look good at a large size, but take them down to a very small size and you see it scales down kind of randomly and it's just not very appealing to look at.
Because when you come down to it, these glyphs really do become bitmaps, right? With the font shading off, with no anti-aliasing, all the fonts are really reduced to a two-color bitmap. Is there some magic formula that allows you to be totally in control of how your big glyph scales down into that bitmap?