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Thread: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

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    Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Serious question.

    I'm a long term mac user but I've decided to have a play with win7. Dont think I'm going to move over but is there anyway of sorting out the crap font rendering? It's all too 'fuzzy'.

    There must be someway of improving this? Other must have exactly the same problem, so is there a little tick box like xp had so you can change the font 'hinting'?

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    mutantbass head Lee H's Avatar
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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    You can tweak and adjust the cleartype settings within windows to suit your taste or to suit how your display is showing the fonts.

    If you follow the link here to get the power access menu, you can get this sorted quite easily.

    Hope this helps

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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Ta!

    I'll have a go!. Just I cant beleive the font rendering is worse than XP!

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    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    What display are you using?

    http://www.microsoft.com/typography/...uner/tune.aspx

    There are many differen't ways of doing a anti-aliasing, the problem is out of the box windows is insainly badly configured, I'm constantly disapointed MS don't design some spec that allows the monitor to have the required calibration info stored, like they do with certain colour info now adays. I guess the typography team don't play well with others.

    Also is this in every application, or just WPF based ones, they designed to completely overhall the rendering logic of those.
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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    What res do you use?
    I'm still on a 1280x1024 and the default settings look terrible, even after basic tweaking I needed to manually switch the font back to Arial for all the menus and turn off Cleartype.
    On a 1680x1050 res, default with minor cleartype tweaking looks perfect.

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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Try messing about with the refresh rate also.
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    Senior[ish] Member Singh400's Avatar
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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Make sure you are running at the native resolution for your monitor (along with refresh rate) and then run the ClearType Tuner tool in control panel.

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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by TheAnimus View Post
    What display are you using?

    http://www.microsoft.com/typography/...uner/tune.aspx

    There are many differen't ways of doing a anti-aliasing, the problem is out of the box windows is insainly badly configured, I'm constantly disapointed MS don't design some spec that allows the monitor to have the required calibration info stored, like they do with certain colour info now adays. I guess the typography team don't play well with others.

    Also is this in every application, or just WPF based ones, they designed to completely overhall the rendering logic of those.
    I don't agree it's badly configured out the box - I haven't ever need to calibrate it myself on any system - but then i'd suggest at the very least it's highly subjective.. WPF text rendering is just plain broken until .NET 4.0.
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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    I'm on a 24" monitor here and text is clear as day, no calibration needed.
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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Mac and windows do look very different, i think its just a case of what your used too.

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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    I wouldn't say it was broken:
    http://blogs.msdn.com/text/
    did a good job explaining some of the issues. It all comes down to what is 'correct' and how horrible bitmaps are.

    If you have a nice high res display it looks really quite good, however in XP it can look a tiny bit funky.

    Right i'm off on one now.

    The problem comes that you want to anti-alias with gray.

    I'm assuming everyone knows the principle of anti-alisaing? A curve or a line intersects some pixels on a grid more than others:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing <-- see the diamond example picture.
    But the problem is TFTs aren't pixels of gray, they are RGB, BGR GRB.... etc. What do you do? Certain colours are more intersected than others? With some fun maths you can get a smoother line, the downside is the luminisoity has a colour gell on it. This is why WPF can appear to have coloured fringing. To disable:
    http://blogs.msdn.com/text/archive/2...xperience.aspx
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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by format View Post
    I'm on a 24" monitor here and text is clear as day, no calibration needed.
    No I agree, but everyones eyes are different

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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Is it just fonts or is everything a bit blurred? You could try adjusting your monitor, especially if it's analogue (VGA) - http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by watercooled View Post
    Is it just fonts or is everything a bit blurred? You could try adjusting your monitor, especially if it's analogue (VGA) - http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/
    Just a FYI, if you use that site, it has not been updated since 2007. It's missing some screen-ratio sizes.

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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Yeah that's a good point. It does have most of the common ones though but I think it lacks 16:9 ratio support.

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    Re: Windows 7 - why are the fonts so bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by watercooled View Post
    Yeah that's a good point. It does have most of the common ones though but I think it lacks 16:9 ratio support.
    Yep. And mine is 16:9.

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