[Dclug] Font rendering in Vista and in X

[Alan McConnell]

On Sat, Dec 02, 2006 at 03:06:08PM -0500, Adam Morey wrote:
>
	. . . .  <snip>

> Hardware-accelerated OpenGL window and desktop rendering, limited to using
> OpenGL for texture composition, has been in use in Mac OS X, in a technology
> called Quartz Extreme, since Mac OS X v10.2. Quartz 2D Extreme is an
> enhancement of this feature and more directly comparable to Xgl. Like Xgl,
> Quartz 2D Extreme brings OpenGL acceleration to all 2D drawing operations
> (not just desktop compositing) and ships with Mac OS X v10.4...

	. . . . <snip>


> In response to a previous response to my comments on fonts, fonts are
> generally rendered poorly in Linux, I'm no expert, but I can tell what I
> like and what I don't.  I think linux renders fonts poorly in part because X
> is a 2D vector graphics (as in poscript and pdf) engine that doesn't use the
> GPU on modern video cards, no anti-aliasing, no font smoothing, no hardware
> acceleration, no fonts minimizing or shading functions to make them look
> better especially as they get smaller at higher resolutions such as on large
> flatpanels. 

(Alan from here on)
I am a bit confused about the claims above, due perhaps to my having never
run any variety of Windows(my last M$ stuff was DOS 3.3, which was a while
back).

Adam, and colleagues, is the claim being made here that Vista has some
innately better system of putting data onto the physical display than
e.g. X11R6 does?  Does Vista have an innately better(faster, finer-grained,
whatever) server than, say, XFree86?

If yes, then in what does the advantage consist?  Can Vista use, say,
my Nokia video card(which drives my 17" AOC Flatpanel display) better
than can my X server?  Info on any and all differences gratefully
received.

If no, then I don't understand the claim about fonts.  I have succeeded
in getting some pictures -- Calibri.png, Cambria.png, Candara.png, etc --
off the Net and I display them with 'display' from the ImageMagick
suite.  They are very pretty.  But not necessarily prettier than the
zillions of fonts that come with e.g.  TeX, or than really expert
font forges can make with e.g. Metafont(a wonderful program!!)

I think all can tell that I'm confused<g>.  So please do your best
to relieve me!  TIA.

Alan


-- 
Alan McConnell :  http://patriot.net/users/alan
    "He lies.  He spies.  He wants us to ignore
    His war . . ."   Impeach him!