I'm with Eric on this -- let's try to do the right thing without requiring any user intervention. I actually can't think of a use case that would require a subpixel argument on text... am I missing something?
Mike Eric Firing wrote: > John Hunter wrote: > >> On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Freddie Witherden <fred...@witherden.org> >> wrote: >> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> As some of you probably know I am working on the GSoC project to >>> externalise the Mathtex engine from Matplotlib. Today I have been >>> toying around with the renderer using various backends. >>> >>> One of the interesting things that I discovered was that the Cairo >>> backend was making use of subpixel rendering. (Or 'ClearType' as >>> Microsoft call it.) This is not surprising -- by default Cairo will >>> respect a users fontconfig settings when rendering text. Since I have >>> subpixel rendering enabled all text rendered by Cairo is subpixel >>> rendered. >>> >>> While this is fantastic for on screen text -- being significantly more >>> pleasing to look at that the text produced by the AGG backend -- it is >>> unsuitable for print. Now it is not too difficult to disable this, >>> Cairo has an API call: cairo_font_options_set_antialias to deal with >>> this. >>> >>> While I could write a quick patch to always disable subpixel rendering >>> it would be something off a loss to those who either view their graphs >>> onscreen or export them for the web -- where using subpixel rendering >>> is now surprisingly common. >>> >>> Is it worth looking into adding subpixel rendering as a configuration >>> option? >>> >> The matplotlib.lines.Line2D objects has an antialiased property -- we >> could add the same property to matplotlib.text.Text to turn on/off >> subpixel rendering (which could also be supported as an rc param) >> > > I haven't poked around, so this may be a stupid question, but: for > cairo, can subpixel rendering simply be left on for screen display and > automatically turned off when writing to a file via savefig? If this > can be done, it seems like a better solution than requiring to the user > to turn the parameter on and off manually, depending on whether show() > or savefig() is being called. > > Eric > > >> JDH >> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > The NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanners deliver under ANY circumstances! Your > production scanning environment may not be a perfect world - but thanks to > Kodak, there's a perfect scanner to get the job done! With the NEW KODAK i700 > Series Scanner you'll get full speed at 300 dpi even with all image > processing features enabled. http://p.sf.net/sfu/kodak-com > _______________________________________________ > Matplotlib-devel mailing list > Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel > -- Michael Droettboom Science Software Branch Operations and Engineering Division Space Telescope Science Institute Operated by AURA for NASA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanners deliver under ANY circumstances! Your production scanning environment may not be a perfect world - but thanks to Kodak, there's a perfect scanner to get the job done! With the NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanner you'll get full speed at 300 dpi even with all image processing features enabled. http://p.sf.net/sfu/kodak-com _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
