Wheres my subpixel rendered fonts?

Question

Wheres my subpixel rendered fonts?

I use an LCD connected via DVI, and my fonts are greyscale smoothed, not subpixeled. It only has a checkbox stating to use LCD smoothing when available, and it's checked, and I use an LCD.

In old Leopard, and on Tiger (when I had a PPC Mac mini), with this very same LCD on DVI, it worked great.

Mac Pro, 2.8GHz 8x, 2GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.6), ATI Radeon 4870, OS X Leopard and Vista

Posted on Aug 28, 2009 11:20 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 28, 2009 11:27 AM in response to Transgenic X5-655

Oh oops! I meant to put this in "Using". My bad, sorry about that.

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Answer 2

Aug 28, 2009 4:03 PM in response to Transgenic X5-655

Ok, this was really annoying.

I had to force SL to use sub pixel rendering for my LCD. Nice move Apple, you just upset a customer.

If you have this issue, you need to type this into terminal and log out and log back on.

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

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Answer 3

ericmeyers

Level 4

1,410 points

Aug 28, 2009 4:08 PM in response to Transgenic X5-655

Yup, I reported this to no avail during beta testing. Boggles the mind.

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Answer 4

Aug 28, 2009 4:10 PM in response to ericmeyers

From what I have researched, Snow Leopard now appears to ask the monitor if it's an LCD or CRT. Some LCDs report CRT or nothing at all, and when nothing, it defaults to CRT mode.

I switched from Windows to Mac in 2004, but with all these things really destroying the customizability of the operating system I pay to use, I might be going to Linux soon.

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Answer 5

ericmeyers

Level 4

1,410 points

Aug 28, 2009 4:16 PM in response to Transgenic X5-655

BTW, 1 is light, 2 is medium, 3 is heavy.

You'll also notice it isn't universal. You have to do the terminal trick for each user and some system dialogs won't feel it.

Eric

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Answer 6

Aug 28, 2009 4:16 PM in response to ericmeyers

Ok great, thank you very much.

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Answer 7

A A P L

Level 7

21,746 points

Aug 28, 2009 4:17 PM in response to Transgenic X5-655

To the contrary, you just customized it.
Linux over this for this issue?

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Answer 8

ericmeyers

Level 4

1,410 points

Aug 28, 2009 4:20 PM in response to A A P L

Trust me AAPL, the display is hideous without the smoothing.

But no, doesn't warrant Linux.

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Answer 9

Aug 28, 2009 4:21 PM in response to A A P L

Apples philosophy is to make an operating system easy to the user. Having to resort to the terminal like you would in Linux, makes it not easy to the user.

Therefore I'd rather go to Linux (which I happily use on my Dell laptop anyway).

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Answer 10

A A P L

Level 7

21,746 points

Aug 28, 2009 4:53 PM in response to Transgenic X5-655

Apple's method appears to keep things simple for the "average user" and anyone above that can do fun things in the Terminal, etc.
I don't like catering always to the LCD, but that's the way it is.

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Answer 11

ericmeyers

Level 4

1,410 points

Aug 28, 2009 5:01 PM in response to A A P L

It was simple in Leopard.

!http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/4461/screencapture2c.png!

If they take anymore away it'll have to read our minds.

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Answer 12

A A P L

Level 7

21,746 points

Aug 28, 2009 5:02 PM in response to ericmeyers

ericmeyers wrote:
It was simple in Leopard.

! http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/4461/screencapture2c.png !

If they take anymore away it'll have to read our minds.

That's in 10.7 😉

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Answer 13

Aug 28, 2009 5:06 PM in response to A A P L

If the average user happens to be a typist, they'll be ****** about that subpixel rendering, which improves the resolution of the font in magical ways, and happen to have a cheaper yet just as good as an apple, LCD.

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Answer 14

A A P L

Level 7

21,746 points

Aug 28, 2009 5:08 PM in response to Transgenic X5-655

That's the key - quit using cheaper gear! :P
JK.
I get your point, but send Apple feedback - may just be an oversight you know.

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Answer 15

Aug 28, 2009 5:09 PM in response to A A P L

And how do I do that? Everytime I try the usual ways, nothing ever got fixed. And from what I see, other BETA testers have also complained only to leave it like the way it is now.

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