Good rendering is a very important issue for Linux. I don't care how good the system is, (most) people won't use it if it has ugly fonts. The font rendering of 4.2 on SuSe 8.0 is the best yet, but it has a ways to go on the very small fonts. Only the Kde applications have good rendering. Netscape 4.79, Opera, Netscape6 and Mozilla can't take advantage of rendering. The next release of X is due in (about) December.
This issue is important to me because some others and myself are planning an outsourcing organization to migrate corporations from Windows to Linux. We can boost about TCO, security, stability and better network access. We would like to boost about the appearance also. Jack Denman Fullerton California On Friday 20 September 2002 19:29, Allen Akin wrote: > On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 08:49:09PM +0400, Vadim Plessky wrote: > | On Wednesday 18 September 2002 4:17 am, Allen Akin wrote: > | [...] > | > | | I'm not saying all this would be easy, or that OpenGL already provides > | | everything that Render might need. But integrating 2D, 3D, and > | | imaging via the 3D API is the way Microsoft is going and Apple has > | | already gone, and was one of the design goals for OpenGL. ... > | > | You are speaking here about 3D rendering, or about *rendering in > | general*? > > Rendering in general. > > Microsoft announced (at the last WinHEC, if I remember correctly) that > in releases of Windows XP after 2004, 2D rendering services will be > provided through Direct3D. > > Mac OS 10.2 already has integrated 2D, 3D, and imaging (based in part on > OpenGL) in Quartz Extreme. > > There's so much functionality overlap that a number of workstation > application vendors have been using the 3D API for GUI, 3D rendering, > and image rendering for years. What's new is the increased likelihood > that that will become the mainstream approach. > > | I am, as many other office workers, primary user of different word > | processor(s), spearsheet(s), etc., and I am mostly concerned about > | quality of rendering for typical text. > > I'm not an expert in digital typography. I've been running some > experiments with OpenGL-based text rendering, but I've got a ways to go > before I reach any strongly-defensible conclusions. > > What I can say today is that using hardware full-scene antialiasing > techniques for rendering small text as geometry works surprisingly well > on a CRT. (4X supersampling with Gaussian filtering seems best at the > moment. I'd like to try the new FSAA techniques available on the Radeon > 9700.) > > I'd like to look into the process of choosing a level-of-detail that's > appropriate for a given drawing size. Obviously this touches on hinting > issues as well as more straightforward problems of approximating complex > geometry. > > I speculate that using geometry rather than pixmaps of antialiased > characters is a better approach in the long run, because with geometry > it's easier to apply small transformations, e.g. subpixel positioning or > scaling to preserve sharp vertical elements. > > I also plan to try multipass rendering to implement high-quality > antialiasing filters with support greater than one pixel in area. Given > current hardware performance levels, it's quite practical to do this, > and it has the advantage that it can take into account the spot > characteristics of CRTs. > > Allen > _______________________________________________ > Render mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/render _______________________________________________ Render mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/render
