

Can Linux use the (supposedly) expired font hinting patents? - sandGorgon
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/24276/

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ZeroGravitas
My understanding is that this is pointless, or perhaps counter-productive.

While the patents are owned by Apple, they are not necessary to achieve the
Mac OS X look, rather they are needed for old skool Windows style fonts. Think
about how old this technology must be if the patents are expiring and what
fonts looked like then.

I set Ubuntu to ignore hints entirely and it looks just like Mac OS X. Just
compare a simple free font with no hints on Mac vs. Windows or read here about
CSS fonts looking rubbish on Windows.

[http://www.fontsquirrel.com/blog/2009/11/what-to-expect-
from...](http://www.fontsquirrel.com/blog/2009/11/what-to-expect-from-our-
font-face-generator)

This site tells you how to get the windows look on Linux, I've not tried it
because that's the last thing I want but it talks about the patented code I
think.

<http://www.sharpfonts.com/>

~~~
some1else
Isn't hinting taken into account even with sub-pixel antialiasing? I believe
that's why Windows fonts appear more crisp

[http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86...](http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86d908c970b-pi)
vs
[http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86...](http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86d90b0970b-pi)

I miss the sharp glyphs :-/ Now that Win7 has vertical subpixel antialiasing
for smoother scrolling, I really feel OSX needs an improvement of it's font
rendering system.

~~~
wtallis
If you would read the update to the article that those images are from, you
would see that the differences are due to OS X and Windows using the same
information differently. Neither one completely ignores any of the hinting or
sub-pixel information. The Windows font renderer is optimized to improve
Microsoft's idea of readability on moderate-resolution displays. The OS X font
renderer is designed to preserve the look of a font more, so that your screen
is a more accurate reflection of how it would look on paper. In reality, the
readability of large amounts of text is substantially the same across both
platforms. (Spacing issues, such as the differences between Word and TeX,
affect readability far more at typical desktop resolutions.) The stylistic
differences are simply large enough that it can be distracting when you are
used to one renderer and you end up in front of another one.

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cschep
This is exciting to me because I firmly believe that installing Linux and
getting the feeling that it's just not as fun to look at is important. The
idea that ubuntu could have some weight to throw around is exciting too. Is
there a way someone could donate to this cause specifically? Maybe it's not
that far along yet..

I hope this goes somewhere!

