On Sat, Sep 07, 2002 at 07:48:01PM +0200, Nils Kassube wrote:
> Guten Abend.
> 
> After seeing and hearing Alan Kays fascinating talk in Hamburg, I
> immediately downloaded and played with the Squeak environment.
> 
> So far, it's looks very interesting and I've already ordered Marc
> Guzdial's book (good choice?). However, there's something that's
> really annoying: Compared to the smooth display on Kay's PowerBook,
> the fonts on my Windows XP notebook using a 1600x1200 TFT display look
> terrible. On my Linux/X11 test system using a conventional monitor, it
> looks okay. I've found a bit of information in the Wiki about
> antialiasing, subpixel rendering and TrueType fonts, but only about
> old Squeak versions, not for Microsoft Windows and the instructions
> are difficult to understand for Squeak newbies.
> 

Hi,

The Squeak display should look exactly the same on all plattforms. The
differences are most likely due to diffent monitors (TFT Vs. CRT). 
Squeak does not use TrueType fonts and does not do *any* anti-aliasing.

So I guess that's why it looks worse than it could... we really need a 
better font-subsystem. And Squeak should be resolution-independend:
Especially with those high-res (1600x1200) TFT Displays you really
can't use a project that has been build for 1024x768. 

The standard image can read and display TrueType (this was done as
a demo for Ballon2D, I guess). But this is not integrated with the
font-system. And it does not do any hinting (that's what make TrueType
fonts look good at smaller point sizes). 

There has been another project (for an old version, 2.7 maybe) which used 
the FreeType Library for dealing with TrueType (with hinting), and it did 
do sub-pixel anti-aliasing. Quite nice:

http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1225 

This should be realy be ported to 3.2

  Marcus

-- 
Marcus Denker marcus at ira.uka.de  -- Squeak! http://squeakland.org