Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 23rd Jul 2012 21:28 UTC
A very detailed post at the Building Windows 8 blog about the graphics subsystem in Windows 8 - very interesting. One part stood out to me, though: "The Metro style design language is typographically rich and a number of Metro style experiences are focused on providing an excellent reading experience. DirectWrite enables great typographic quality, super-fast processing of font data for rendering, and provides industry-leading global text support. We've continued to improve text performance in Windows 8 by optimizing our default text rendering in Metro style apps to deliver better performance and efficiency, while maintaining typographic quality and global text support." All this still doesn't explain why text rendering on Metro (so not the classic desktop) had to be made as horrible as it is. Please, for the love of god, give us the option of turning ClearType's subpixel RGB optimisation back on for Metro applications. Fonts look horrible without it, which is kind of ironic given how font-heavy Metro is.
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RE[4]: ClearType isn't coming back
by _txf_ on Tue 24th Jul 2012 08:07
in reply to "RE[3]: ClearType isn't coming back"
Member since:2008-03-17
I'm not sure why rotating the display is an unsurmountable problem. Worst case scenario, you'd just turn it off when its rotated 90 degrees and the text goes from Great to good. Isn't that better than having it always just good most of the time?
1) Consistency of the text goes completely out of the window. I imagine that is fairly jarring to the user.
2) The font cache will have to be recreated for ClearType glyphs and non ClearType glyphs. Then the gui will also have to be redrawn with the new glyphs, etc.
RE[5]: ClearType isn't coming back
by bouhko on Tue 24th Jul 2012 11:34
in reply to "RE[4]: ClearType isn't coming back"
Member since:2010-06-24
RE[5]: ClearType isn't coming back
by Bill Shooter of Bul on Tue 24th Jul 2012 13:42
in reply to "RE[4]: ClearType isn't coming back"
Member since:2006-07-14
1) Consistency of the text goes completely out of the window. I imagine that is fairly jarring to the user.
The entire display is being rotated 90! That is jarring enough to completely obscure any minor font rendering changes.
2) The font cache will have to be recreated for ClearType glyphs and non ClearType glyphs. Then the gui will also have to be redrawn with the new glyphs, etc.
How may hundreds of kilobytes would it take to have two font caches? Again the screen is being rotated 90 degrees, the entire display will have to be redrawn regardless.
Edited 2012-07-24 13:43 UTC
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/13/13 14:35 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/11/13 17:07 UTC
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/10/13 23:13 UTC
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/08/13 14:57 UTC
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/07/13 11:40 UTC
This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/04/13 12:45 UTC
Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
Linked by nfeske on 05/31/13 10:12 UTC
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/29/13 16:59 UTC
At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!More Features »
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2006-07-14
I'm not sure why rotating the display is an unsurmountable problem. Worst case scenario, you'd just turn it off when its rotated 90 degrees and the text goes from Great to good. Isn't that better than having it always just good most of the time? It will never be worse than simply having it off all the time, and not any more jarring than switching between a desktop with clear type and back to metro without.
I think the real reason why its not there is that they don't have time to figure out what to do with it, so they just left it out completely. Watch for it to come back in a service pack, accompanied with ads telling us how they listened to customer feedback to make windows 8 even better.