Re:MacOS Mojave removes subpixel anti-aliasing, making non-r...
by dahart on Saturday July 07, 2018 @03:49PM
(#17480198)
> This is the reason text looks bad on transformed HTML elements in browsers, or when you click a button on Windows and it tilts slightly.
It's pretty common for regular AA to be borked in those situations, browser support for AA under transforms hasn't ever been awesome, and it's only been decent in the major browsers pretty recently.
> Text rendering should be aware of the (sub)pixels, even post-transform. While we're at it, this can apply to vector art, too.
Text & vector rendering with regular AA are currently aware of virtual sub-pixels, when they're not borked by transforms like in your examples. But making the browser rendering engine have to be aware of the order and orientation of your specific LCD hardware sub-pixels of your monitor would be very difficult for browsers to support. There is a reason subpixel AA has never worked everywhere.
When I first glanced at this article yesterday, I got the mistaken impression that Apple was turning off all AA, not the LCD specific ClearType style of subpixel AA. That would be a big deal, but that's not what's happening. The difference between regular AA and ClearType style AA does exist, but it's pretty small. I'm a graphics person, and I'm very much in favor of AA, but the outrage at losing subpixel AA feels overblown to me. It helps a little, but also has the downside of chromatic aberration. I'm honestly wondering if most of the hubbub here is people making the same mistake I did initially and thinking that they're losing all anti-aliasing?
It's pretty common for regular AA to be borked in those situations, browser support for AA under transforms hasn't ever been awesome, and it's only been decent in the major browsers pretty recently.
> Text rendering should be aware of the (sub)pixels, even post-transform. While we're at it, this can apply to vector art, too.
Text & vector rendering with regular AA are currently aware of virtual sub-pixels, when they're not borked by transforms like in your examples. But making the browser rendering engine have to be aware of the order and orientation of your specific LCD hardware sub-pixels of your monitor would be very difficult for browsers to support. There is a reason subpixel AA has never worked everywhere.
When I first glanced at this article yesterday, I got the mistaken impression that Apple was turning off all AA, not the LCD specific ClearType style of subpixel AA. That would be a big deal, but that's not what's happening. The difference between regular AA and ClearType style AA does exist, but it's pretty small. I'm a graphics person, and I'm very much in favor of AA, but the outrage at losing subpixel AA feels overblown to me. It helps a little, but also has the downside of chromatic aberration. I'm honestly wondering if most of the hubbub here is people making the same mistake I did initially and thinking that they're losing all anti-aliasing?