Hi,
I noticed a problem with non-antialiased "programming" fonts being rendered in a strange way in my TextMate 1.5.8 (1498). Some letters will look wrong and blend with neighbouring characters.
Example screenshot for Consolas (11pt) with highlighted problem zones, note the distorted dot on the i and the blending e and {: http://www.quicksnapper.com/ballaschk/image/consolas-11pt/
Example screenshot for Pragmata (11pt) with highlighted problem zones, note the distorted "g", "w" and "s": http://www.quicksnapper.com/ballaschk/image/pragmata-11pt/
Monaco looks great, but makes it too hard for me to differentiate between certain characters: http://www.quicksnapper.com/ballaschk/image/monaco-9pt
I did not test with Profont or other small-size optimized fonts, but will do soon. Do you experience the same problems? Any hints how to correct it?
Cheers Martin
Martin Ballaschk wrote:
Hi,
I noticed a problem with non-antialiased "programming" fonts being rendered in a strange way in my TextMate 1.5.8 (1498). Some letters will look wrong and blend with neighbouring characters.
Example screenshot for Consolas (11pt) with highlighted problem zones, note the distorted dot on the i and the blending e and {: http://www.quicksnapper.com/ballaschk/image/consolas-11pt/
Example screenshot for Pragmata (11pt) with highlighted problem zones, note the distorted "g", "w" and "s": http://www.quicksnapper.com/ballaschk/image/pragmata-11pt/
Monaco looks great, but makes it too hard for me to differentiate between certain characters: http://www.quicksnapper.com/ballaschk/image/monaco-9pt
I did not test with Profont or other small-size optimized fonts, but will do soon. Do you experience the same problems? Any hints how to correct it?
Cheers Martin
Hi, I have started to use TextMate with non-antialiased fonts lately and ran into similar problems with some fonts.
Mostly this is probably due to hinting (or the lack thereof) of fonts.
I noticed that certain fonts work best with certain sizes: ProFont works best for me in 9pt and 11pt. Envy Code R works best from 11pt up. Liberation Mono works best in 10pt and from 12pt up but looks a bit odd in 11pt. Andale Mono mashes letters together in anything lower than 11pt. OCR A (while not a coding font it's fixed width) looks really strange in 12pt to 14pt due to the odd line thickness.
Overall I had the best experience with ProFont, Liberation Mono and Envy Code R in terms of readability and character "cleanliness" at a small size with no AA.
The blending you saw in consolas with e and { are probably due to the fact that e takes up the whole letter witdh and the { is positioned at the far left of the em quad. Usually selecting a font size smaller or larger would solve such problems for me.
Regards, Torsten
Hi!
Torsten Walter wrote:
Martin Ballaschk wrote:
Example screenshot for Pragmata (11pt) with highlighted problem zones, note the distorted "g", "w" and "s": http://www.quicksnapper.com/ballaschk/image/pragmata-11pt/
I have started to use TextMate with non-antialiased fonts lately and ran into similar problems with some fonts. Mostly this is probably due to hinting (or the lack thereof) of fonts.
Thanks for your reply.According to the designer Pragmata is "hand-hinted" for maximum readability is not unexpensive ... but the horrible rendering at low sizes is apparently a global problem of my mac. So I will look into this, but seems to be off-topic as it's not a problem of textmate itself :)
Cheers Martin
I noticed a problem with non-antialiased "programming" fonts being rendered in a strange way in my TextMate 1.5.8 (1498). Some letters will look wrong and blend with neighbouring characters.
Example screenshot for Consolas (11pt) with highlighted problem zones, note the distorted dot on the i and the blending e and {: http://www.quicksnapper.com/ballaschk/image/consolas-11pt/
Consolas is an explicitly AA-dependent, being designed for Microsoft's "ClearType" scheme. I'm fairly certain it won't look good non- antialiased at any size or resolution.
~ Daniel
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Daniel Stockman -
Martin Ballaschk -
Torsten Walter