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Comment by dtf | Hacker News Reader

This equivalent to TrueType hinting, right? It's funny that hinting went out of fashion over the years, mainly due to a fairly sensible argument from Apple that displays would get better - which they undoubtedly have if you look at an iPad 3. Linux users, who had a choice, started switching from patent-encumbered pixel-fitted full hinting to the softer anti-aliased look, perhaps in part because many of their cool Apple owning friends told them that it "looked right".

So in a way, because of all this history, the pixel-fitted logo actually looks too sharp, and hence a little uncool.

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This sort of thing is a tough call. I'd say the pixel fitted logo looks better if each is considered in isolation, but viewed as a set the anti-aliased ones look better as they look more consistent.

Fonts have a similar issue. The TrueType font hinting made fonts more readable but sacrificed correct horizontal spacing and often made them less aesthetically pleasing IMO. If I were considering a font purely for on screen work without scaling then I think a carefully designed and hinted font looks best, but if there is going to be any scaling (through different font sizes or zooming in or out) then I'll go with the Apple style every time.

I've always felt that the strong hinting used by Windows optimizes for individual glyph legibility by sacrificing kerning and overall readability. I've found that I can't read a whole ebook on a Windows system, but on a Mac I can tolerate it (if I use a large enough font size).

I don't know, my "cool Apple owning friends" told me for years that unhinted font rendering was better, and I always thought they could pry my Bitstream Vera from my cold dead hands. Then I used OS X full-time for a while. Upon switching back to Linux, I immediately turned hinting off. It just... looked "wrong".

The difference is that with no hinting you optimize for maintaining the shape of the characters, while with hinting you optimize for having the shapes falling on pixels.

“cool Apple friends” have often been graphic-oriented people, so they preferred seeing their fonts right. Windows and Linux people only saw blur because they were less trained to look at fonts.

(I know, this is a generalization, I disabled hinting myself on my Linux machine years ago, and I’m no graphic person at all)

I've actually found that I like neither no hinting (OS X) or full hinting (Windows). What I've found I like is a slight hinting. I get mostly the shape of the letters like you see in OS X and a semi decent (probably not for an artist) font sizes. This also gets me letters that get fit to my pixels and makes it look nice (I don't have a 300dpi screen where you can't tell the difference).

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