Dano vs R5 -- font rendering


Dano _does_ have worse font rendering when compared against R5. This is most apparent on high quality sharp monitors, with a decent video card with good video bandwidth. Video cabling also matters a lot. Independent RGBHV 50 ohm runs to the card are best, or 75 ohm on some monitors.

Returning to the point, here are some comparisons between R5 and Dano font rendering. The dano fonts are with hinting turned off, to avoid colouring the results. Hinting has a negative effect on the quality expressed in the screenshots.









TOP: BeOS R5.0.3

BOTTOM: BeOS "Dano"


Dano appears to be rendering the fonts to an internal oversampling buffer at perhaps 2x the blitter size, and converting down with rough arithmetic to gain the "anti-aliasing". R5 appears to be using a more sophisticated algorithm at the vector level, which may be calculating the vectors' intersections with pixel areas, and shading the areas appropriately.

As you can see, the fonts are undeniably much more readable under R5!


Copyright (c) 2002 Cyan Helkaraxe, all rights reserved.