Re: font fuzziness with Bitstream Vera

["Cody B." <cody zone38 net>]

Charlie Lowe wrote:

> http://drupal.org/ just updated it's web design to use Bitstream Vera. 
> Some windows users are reporting fuzziness of the font in this thread:
>
> http://drupal.org/node/11695
>
> and here's a screenshot:
>
> http://www.clickbrain.com/images/drupalscreen.png
>
> I've also experienced it, too, on an ASUS GeForce 5700 with a 
> Viewsonic 17" LCD. But it's intermittant.
>
> Anyone know why this is happening? Is it a display driver bug, as 
> suggested in this thread, and if so, under what conditions/hardware 
> configurations it is likely to be a problem? 


Actually, this is normal behavior. As the post you've taken a screenshot 
of states, Bitstream Vera is configured, unlike most of the standard 
Windows fonts, to use anti-aliasing (i.e., font smoothing) at *all* 
sizes. This is not the norm on Windows, which is why it looks so 'fuzzy' 
in comparison to most Windows fonts-- but on Mac and Unix systems, that 
look is actually standard for all fonts.

The smoothing is actually helpful in this case, too-- as Jim Gettys has 
mentioned, the hinting of Vera is optimized for the open-source FreeType 
renderer, and so edges will look even more 'fuzzy' on Windows without 
font smoothing enabled.

--
Cody "codeman38" Boisclair
cody zone38 net
http://www.zone38.net/