

Text Rendering: Why Computer Displays Suck for Reading - garret
http://daringfireball.net/2003/11/panther_text_rendering

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mynameishere
_The problem is simply one of resolution._

Blah blah. Brace a book or magazine in the same position as a computer monitor
and you will have the same unpleasant experience while reading it. Monitors
are bad because of positioning, immobility, and (even if those were solved)
rigidity/unresponsiveness to manipulation by the fingers.

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ntoshev
I am not sure resolution is the only reason. LCDs emit their own light, paper
just reflects light and is much gentler for the eyes because of this.

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marvin
That has always sounded like anecdotal evidence to me. Reading on a monitor
should in that case be like reading paper in very good light, although with
lower resolution. What is the qualitative difference between emitted light and
reflected light?

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edu
I suppose reflected light matches better with the ambient, while with emitted
light this is difficult to get. Matchng both, brightness and color.

Also, I don't like to read on white background (neither screen or paper), and
on the computer nowadays the more usual background is white... I like
yellowish backgrounds.

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weel
I agree that computer displays suck for reading. But there is one important,
very simple lesson to be learned from this about computer typography: while in
print, serif fonts are always easier to read for long stretches of text and
sans-serif should be used only for display (headings and the like), on
computer screens it really helps to have very simple fonts with the minimum
possible amount of embellishment. Some sort of Helvetica derivative is always
easier to read, especially in small sizes, and even with the fanciest subpixel
rendering, than a complex thick-and-thin serifed font designed with high-
quality print in mind.

BTW, I haven't seen a Kindle yet. Somebody I know has one, but he doesn't live
in the area and I'm unlikely to meet him for quite a while. Are they any more
pleasant to read from than a computer screen?

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dcurtis
This one never gets old.

It's amazing how little people know about subpixel rendering, even in the
design profession. I suppose it's not really required knowledge, but it's
interesting to know how text antialiasing really works. You can do a lot with
LCDs.

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tx
You got it wrong: LCDs, due to their incredible sharpness, _created_ a need
for antialiased fonts. Predating CRTs with their universal slight blurriness
didn't need it, it was kind of "built into the hardware".

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dcurtis
Huh? You can't do subpixel rendering on a CRT, so it would have been
impossible to implement before LCDs.

Normal antialiasing has existed since long before LCDs.

