I've been trying to look for special mods to Windows that'll change text rendering to PDF style. To get what I'm mentioning, you can try Apple's Safari 3 browser for Windows.

I've been trying to look for methods of emulating the said behavior. Sadly, all I can find are infos on how to enable/disable/tweak Cleartype. Is it possible to change the way Windows renders all these fonts?

Please, refrain from posts such as:
- "Why would you want blurry text? Cleartype's WAAY better!"
- "To tweak Cleartype, go to Microsoft's .... or download PowerToys..."

There's not a way to change it to be like the one in OS X, as far as I know. There's a plug-in, somewhere, that will achieve the OS X effect in Firefox, though.

Your Computer Shopper esque answer would now be to get OSX and try some emulators for your compiled Win32 stuff (which is probably just about 80386 enough to work with one which would render the fonts with mac os call).

I wouldn't know where to start, saved you the cover price of Computer Shopper in any event.

After using vista, os x and ubuntu on the same monitor... I gotta say that mac looks the best. Well, vista doesn't look bad either, it's just a matter of consistency. Both vista and os x use the same hinting/antialiasing on all fonts except for small sizes in some cases. But ubuntu is a tragic mess, some apps will show fonts two points smaller than what the default is, small fonts are hinted/antialised and the results depend on the fonts. So you are safe with some fonts, and majorly screwed with some others. I think the reason ubuntu dosnt have uber sexy font rendering for ALL fonts is because the most used methods for achieving those things are patented by evil companies.

You can install the ClearType tweak for xp, which according to this, it works on vista. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vis...-windows-vista/
I guess it deals with a couple of registry keys that handle cleartype.

You could try!! Although the problem with cleartype is that fonts are 'thinner', which is great if you are close to the monitor. OS X is better if you are slightly further away

Do you happen to know the name of this plugin?

Hmm, I don't remember off the top of my head. IIRC, it made sites written in Japanese look really nice, but the rest of the text got too muddled, so I removed it. I think it has to do with the Safari rendering engine, though, so maybe try Googling along those lines. If I think of it, I'll post it.

Cleartype is just MS's name for Sub-pixel anti aliasing, OS X already does this.

The difference is that OS X tries to retain the form of the font, and Windows tries to snap it to the pixel grid, the Windows method is better for low resolution displays, OS X's is better for high resolution displays. I don't think it is possible to change it (MS would have to do that)

It is possible, I use Mac-Like font smoothing on my Vista machine. I just run GDI++ in the background and my fonts are all sexy =D.

Some light reading for you: http://reader.feedshow.com/show_items-feed...0af4f39972ff59a

Hot damn, that's a smart idea.

I keep forgetting what you can do with hooking libraries.

+1

So all you have to do is run that gditray.exe application in the background and it works? Or is there something I'm missing?

Yes, that's pretty much it.
This was posted by someone on another forum, which I found yesterday. This is much better as it's better configured than downloading the version on that site, and the titlebar fonts don't screw up, for example.

http://rapidshare.com/files/119658343/GDI__.zip.html

Here is a preview (I took this earlier when discussing this on IRC)

That looks really good, I think I will have to install this on my Windows-based PCs.

Oh, wow, this makes a huge difference. Thanks for the alternate one

By the way, this may come in handy. It's an English translation of the Japanese Readme. It gives instructions on how you can edit the .ini file to change the settings of the program. For example, you can change the font weight, or you can exclude applications from have GDI++ applied to them (some will need to be excluded due to incompatibility), or you can set GDI++ to run on one program (most likely the browser).

I downloaded the rapid share link, and while the fonts look fantastic within the browser, they look very "blotty" in the titlebars, tabs, in the start menu and on right click menu's everywhere within explorer. Are there some settings I should tweak to avoid this?

I set FontLoader to 0, WidthMode to 1 and HintingMode to 2, And my fonts ended up looking like crap (I think it's got some bugs when it tells FreeType to measure the characters, FreeType itself shows the fonts fine)

I've tried all sorts of settings - I just can't get the fonts to look smooth within Explorer or any titlebars within applications, which is a shame. Maybe it doesn't work great with widescreen resolutions? although I can't see why that's the case.

I'll keep for future use though in case it gets any better

You should use The font smoothing won't be applied to Explorer then.

Wow... The font smoothing looks great!

Is there anyway to just get it applied to webpages without the toolbars and tab headings? because it really makes a mess of the toolbar fonts

No, there isn't. I would like that feature too

so i've been tinkering around with gdi++ and while it works, almost every application i open throws an error of needing msvcr80.dll even though the program opens fine after i click ok. if i stick msvcr80.dll in the system32 directory, then i get a new error saying "Runtime Error R6034 An application has made an attempt to load the C Runtime library incorrectly. Please contact the application support team for more information." has anyone else experienced that when trying to get gdi++ working?

>> Dr Broccoli, lcg

Thanks, just what I wanted!

Now I realized what the other Nera in that 2ch thread was talking about. I didn't know he/she/it was answering my question, because I assumed everyone would use the >> pointer when replying.
Well, now, I feel lucky again that I've learnt moonspeak.

The latest versions in the link that was posted at the bottom seems to work pretty good.
http://free.flop.jp/gdi++/upload.php

search google for microsoft c runtime library and install that

This little tool is wicked thanks !

Hey guys, I'm running Vista x64, is there any way to get this app to hook into 64-bit executables? currently only 32-bit apps are affected, but 64-bit ones like explorer.exe isn't. Sucks.

You'd probably need ones that are compiled for 64-bit.

I cant decide whether I love it or hate it

It does look rather smooth... BTW the latest version fixes the screwups in the taskbar... you just download and run

Plus you can set weighting, antialiasing, etc per individual font.

can anybody post the perfect gdi++ .ini file for xp ? this seems better than the native ClearType.

Just wondering whats the ramifications of using this with Vista Aero - Is the font rendering shuftied to DWM or is it still GDI?

If so doesnt that mean your bypassing the hardware acceleration of DWM?

Edit: CPU Load makes me unhappy

I have been looking for this kind of tool for a while now . I think font rendering is all done by GDI+. Not an expert on the subject though.

And where would I get those?

This thread is so smooth!

only affects GDI(+) apps, GDI(+) apps don't get hardware acceleration anyway.

Thanks dude! This is awesome

Download the source and compile it, I'd think not sure whether it has 64bit support though

easier said than done. Is there any sort of guide that shows me how to compile something? I can do it in linux with the terminal (and only sometimes), but in windows i have no clue.

You don't need GDI or anything like that. And here is proof. Here is what "My Documents" looks like.



Windows Xp SP2

^ That text looks seriously marred.

OMG that looks nice.

'Downloads' is misspelt.

That screenshot illustrates nothing but a XP SP2 system looking like a Mac system,

It still has the font ugliness.. Slap GDI++ on it and it should look nicer

As to the 64bit guy - You asked where to get it, I provided the answer.
You could try snooping around the authors site but its in Japanese...

Thanks


Wrong. GDI would make it bold, hence far from mac fonts.

I think "bold" would look a lot better than "heinous". . . which is the way it looks now.

Maybe it's just my display, but the fonts are thin and it looks as if they "fade" away or something.

Just my opinion.

I'm about to give this little app a try for myself.

GDI only looks good on default windows fonts. The fonts I use are pre-smoothed, so if I use GDI over them it will look messed up.

Ehh?

I thought this was FOR Windows? Oo...