Display Font

[Jeff Vandehey]

Hi guys, a user I support recently upgraded his monitor to the 20" cinema
display, connected via ADB/DVI converter, and is running it at 1680 x 1050.
He is unhappy that his 12 point fonts look way too small on his monitor. I
told him to increase the magnification to 150%. He did that and said that
the font looks bigger (a good thing), but now says that the spacing between
letters and words are off.

I'm not sure which font he's using, but he wants to magnify the text on the
screen, without changing the spacing in any way. I have not seen this first
hand, so I can't speak for it's accuracy. Does anyone have any general hints
that might help?

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi guys, a user I support recently upgraded his monitor to the 20" cinema
display, connected via ADB/DVI converter, and is running it at 1680 x 1050.
He is unhappy that his 12 point fonts look way too small on his monitor. I
told him to increase the magnification to 150%. He did that and said that
the font looks bigger (a good thing), but now says that the spacing between
letters and words are off.

I'm not sure which font he's using, but he wants to magnify the text on the
screen, without changing the spacing in any way. I have not seen this first
hand, so I can't speak for it's accuracy. Does anyone have any general hints
that might help?

Somewhere between Redmond and Cupertino this has been a long running
sore. Later versions of Word and OS X seem to have lessened the
problem, or maybe I have learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.

It might look better in page mode, and fiddling with the magnification,
and typing with your eyes shut might all help. Or setting fractional
spacing in the preferences. Basically, the on screen spacing has always
been broken.

Don't even look at the split screen's spacing for editing comments or
footnotes. I'm amazed they let it out the door. You have days using the
left and right arrow keys to test whether there is a space between
words, or three. Hopeless!

The good news is that it prints better than it looks on screen.

If he still whinges, there is nothing for it. Send the 20" display over
here.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

It might look better in page mode, and fiddling with the magnification,
and typing with your eyes shut might all help. Or setting fractional
spacing in the preferences. Basically, the on screen spacing has always
been broken.

Does it make any difference if you turn on (or off) font smoothing in
preferences? (Since I'm not in X, I can't check this. Actually, I couldn't
check it anyway since I don't have a 20" monitor!)

If he still whinges, there is nothing for it. Send the 20" display over
here.

LOL!

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[Elliott Roper]

Does it make any difference if you turn on (or off) font smoothing in
preferences? (Since I'm not in X, I can't check this. Actually, I couldn't
check it anyway since I don't have a 20" monitor!)

It used to, but they fixed that ages ago. At some point there was a new
version of OS X and a revision of Word. Postscript fonts went *loony*

I forgot to add that Postscript fonts are not handled as kindly as
Truetype. It's a damn shame that all the nicest fonts are Postscript.
Who would touch Times New Roman with a bargepole when they had Adobe
Garamond?

LOL!

Well Beth, if you don't ask ;-)

 

[Tim Murray]

He is unhappy that his 12 point fonts look way too small on his monitor.

12 points in what application?

Do the math: When you drive a monitor in high resolution, X number of dots
takes less space, thus smaller characters. Zooming to 150% is only undoing
the resolution, in a way. You'll have a smoother image because of the higher
density, but everything is larger ... just as if it was set to a lower
resolution. Also:
- Most applications have zoom.
- Browsers can increase font size (such as Command+plus in Safari)

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Send the 20" display to me. I will examine and test it thoroughly for
incompatibilities. These tests will take about five years...

Word varies the inter-word and inter-letter spacing on the screen to make
things fit while still showing you where the lines are going to wrap.

Some fonts will work better than others. Some will look better with OS X's
font smoothing turned on, some look better with it off. Older fonts expect
CRT displays with round pixels. Newer fonts look better on flat panels that
have square pixels. You can get special fonts drawn for current displays,
which have rectangular pixels.

But basically, some font will always look crap if it is designed to be
printed at 4,800 dpi and you insist on displaying it on a computer monitor
at 96 dpi. Something has to give...

The fonts Microsoft supplies are hinted to make them look "better" on
screen. Particularly Arial, and Verdana which was actually designed purely
for on-screen use.

But the bottom line is that the user will need to fiddle with all his
settings and view options until he finds a combination that he can live
with.

Hope this helps


This responds to article <BCAC1F2B.FF006EE2%[email protected]>,

Hi guys, a user I support recently upgraded his monitor to the 20" cinema
display, connected via ADB/DVI converter, and is running it at 1680 x 1050.
He is unhappy that his 12 point fonts look way too small on his monitor. I
told him to increase the magnification to 150%. He did that and said that
the font looks bigger (a good thing), but now says that the spacing between
letters and words are off.

I'm not sure which font he's using, but he wants to magnify the text on the
screen, without changing the spacing in any way. I have not seen this first
hand, so I can't speak for it's accuracy. Does anyone have any general hints
that might help?

Thanks,
Jeff

--

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John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]