Font Smooting on Mac OS X

Font Smooting on Mac OS X

[David Wheeler]

Hi All,

I'm the Carbonized Emacs from CVS (21.3.50.1, downloaded 12 November
2002). I want to use the Lucida Sans Typewriter font on my TiBook, and
have configured it like this:

  (set-frame-font "-apple-lucida sans
typewriter-medium-r-normal--11-0-75-75-m-0-mac-roman")

This works great, except that Mac OS X's font smooting doesn't kick in
at this font size. Compare this screen shot of Emacs with the above
setting:

  http://david.wheeler.net/Emacs.pdf

To this one of TextEdit displaying the same text in 11 point Lucida
Sans Typewriter:

    http://david.wheeler.net/TextEdit.pdf

If I increase the size to 12, the font-smoothing kicks in, but not at
11. Is there a hard-set minimum font size at which Emacs allows font
smoothing? I've set the minimum size in the "General" system
preferences to 8 points -- maybe Emacs could look for that setting
when it's available?

If I'm mistaken about the hard-setting of the minimum font-smooting
font size, and there's some setting that allows me to get Emacs to
exploit Mac OS X's font-smoothing at at point sizes smaller than 12,
I'd be grateful to know what it is.

Thanks!

David

Re: Font Smooting on Mac OS X

[Edward Dodge]

EMACS is a Carbon app while Textedit is a Cocoa app that uses Quartz
for text-smooting (anti-aliasing).  To get equivalent functionality
for Carbon apps,  I think you need to get "Silk."

Or at least this is something I heard a while ago...

Edward