1180439 - Fonts are not smooth when cleartype is off

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics: Text, defect)

Description

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

Attachment: Clear Type is off

On public computers which I have access to, I've found that it is very difficult to read long texts because Clear Type is off. Although I don't have administrative rights on these computers, I've found that I can turn on Clear Type by running the cttune.exe utility. So far, everything is right, because the IT team probably prefer it that way. 

The more interesting behavior I found is that when I am turning off Clear Type, I see some differences, but the text isn't as ugly as before I've enabled Clear Type but less smooth than when Clear Type is enabled. Is it the right behavior? is it possible the Firefox doesn't turn off the font smoothing when disabling Clear Type? Is it possible that the 'ugly fonts' are a bug and the third mode is what supposed to be the result of disabling Clear Type?

Comment 1

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

Attachment: Clear Type enabled

Comment 2

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

Attachment: Clear Type disabled

Comment 3

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

So what's going on here is interesting. It seems these machines don't just have cleartype disabled, but they have antialiasing disabled altogether. Cttune, when you're disabling the clear type you've selected, seems to leave you with greyscale, which indeed is cleartype disabled, but it doesn't have antialiasing disabled altogether.

Perhaps disabling antialiasing altogether is considered better for the readability of some fonts.