The problem with all these font rendering discussions is that we are missing some ultra-high quality (offline) reference rendering system to compare against. Not only does that make these discussions pretty unproductive (just subjective back and forth), but also practically that drives font designers to build fonts that look good on their preferred platform(s), rather than something that is built to look good on spec. This drives then feedback loop where other platforms then need to start emulating the major popular platforms with their flaws instead of aiming for the highest quality; for example this stem-darkening is almost certainly just inspired by macos but doesn't really have justification outside that.
Am I the last person on the Earth to turn off font smoothing completely and use fonts perfectly hinted to the pixel grid? Can't get any sharper than that, and really helps with eye strain.
On the one hand... OK great for consumption.<p>On the other... Wouldn't this lead to terrible choices in font selection for anyone NOT using these settings?
Related:<p><i>No more blurry fonts in Linux</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39640329">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39640329</a> - March 2024 (2 comments)<p><i>No more blurry fonts in Linux</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38853588">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38853588</a> - Jan 2024 (1 comment)
This works very well on my 4k screen.<p>Every discussion of font rendering technology must include a statement to the effect of "Acorn RISC OS fonts from 1990 have not been bettered". :-)
Video showing the before/after: <a href="https://streamable.com/904w6l" rel="nofollow">https://streamable.com/904w6l</a>