Once the CSS issues are worked out – and they will be – there will still be great differences in onscreen font rendering from platform to platform.
And that’s without mentioning E-Paper devices like the Kindle, either. Rendering on those is a whole other bag.
This lies beyond the reach of standards, I believe. At least for now. Being, as it is, based on whatever display technology is being employed. Does it seem like it would make sense to use the same rasterization algorithm on a 32” LCD as you do on a mobile phone? Don’t know. But I don’t think so.
I’ve read some technical papers on the complexities of computer display and the problems are mind-boggling.
To swipe Richard Feynman’s famous line, “Well actually, gentlemen, it IS rocket science.”
And to make things worse, the specific issues peculiar to the display of typefaces tends to get pushed to the side and incorporated as an afterthought, if at all, into the more general problems of image display.
On a more optimistic note, Microsoft is hinting at some big changes in IE9 with DirectWrite rendering.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-at-ie9-for-developers.aspx
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/IE-9-Surfing-on-the-GPU-with-D2D/
For now, my question is: What can Microsoft do to alleviate the problem in the near term?
Must I turn to Silverlight or Flash for decent rendering at larger sizes for the next ten years?
Not acceptable.
Richard Fink
Once the CSS issues are worked out – and they will be – there will still be great differences in onscreen font rendering from platform to platform.
And that’s without mentioning E-Paper devices like the Kindle, either. Rendering on those is a whole other bag.
This lies beyond the reach of standards, I believe. At least for now. Being, as it is, based on whatever display technology is being employed. Does it seem like it would make sense to use the same rasterization algorithm on a 32” LCD as you do on a mobile phone? Don’t know. But I don’t think so.
I’ve read some technical papers on the complexities of computer display and the problems are mind-boggling.
To swipe Richard Feynman’s famous line, “Well actually, gentlemen, it IS rocket science.”
And to make things worse, the specific issues peculiar to the display of typefaces tends to get pushed to the side and incorporated as an afterthought, if at all, into the more general problems of image display.
On a more optimistic note, Microsoft is hinting at some big changes in IE9 with DirectWrite rendering.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-at-ie9-for-developers.aspx
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/IE-9-Surfing-on-the-GPU-with-D2D/
For now, my question is: What can Microsoft do to alleviate the problem in the near term?
Must I turn to Silverlight or Flash for decent rendering at larger sizes for the next ten years?
Not acceptable.
Regards, Rich