Re: Antialiased text on X11

[James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com>]

>>>>> "Miles" == Miles Bader <snogglethorpe@gmail.com> writes:

Miles> [I didn't change anything in the fontconfig setup so it seems
Miles> the default settings -- which are presumably aimed at white
Miles> backgrounds -- deals pretty well with black backgrounds too.]

It does depend on the font and whether you are using the byte code
interpreter.  The well-instructed fonts tend to use single-pixel
wide stems up to circa 16–18 ppem.  The auto-fitter, however,
tends to result in wider stems.  Xft’s rgba filter is tuned for
light backgrounds; single-pixel stems tend to drop out when it is
used with dark backgrounds.

So, if you are using sub-pixel rendering, the BCI and a well
instructed font you will see *much* better text with a light
background than with a dark.  But if you are using fonts w/o
quality instructions — whether poorly-instructed fonts, non-
ttf fonts, or freetype compiled w/o the interpreter — and/or
greyscale rather than sub-pixel then light on dark should be
almost as good as dark on light text.

Or at least that is what I saw back when I tested it.

-JimC
-- 
James H. Cloos, Jr. <cloos@jhcloos.com>