Font smoothing, anti-aliasing, and sub-pixel rendering

From the translator: I recently had a small dispute with a friend as to how the Safari sites are rendered. They say that the text there looks much "tastier" :) In an attempt to find the truth (although all this is definitely a matter of taste), this article was found by Joel Spolsky, who partly clarified why this is so. I'm not sure exactly what I’m writing to that blog, however, the article (UPD. Which, as it turned out, has already been translated. I don’t hide it in drafts, because many haven’t seen it, and the design and translation are better for me ):

Opinions Apple and Microsoft have always disagreed on the issue of displaying fonts on a computer screen. Today, both companies are using sub-pixel rendering to achieve acceptable display of unsmoothed fonts at low screen resolutions. What they still disagree about is in philosophy.

• Apple believes that the algorithm should preserve the design of the outline as much as possible, even if for the sake of this you have to sacrifice a little blur.
• Microsoft believes that the shape of each letter must be firmly inscribed in the pixel boundaries in order to avoid blurring and increase readability, even if for the sake of this you have to sacrifice distortion of the style.

Since Safari is now available for Windows, the use of Apple algorithms has led to serious problems. You can compare the difference in approaches on one monitor, you will see what I mean. I think you’ll notice a difference — Apple’s fonts are actually fuzzy, with blurred edges, but small sizes show much more difference between different styles, because drawing them is much more similar to what the font should look like, in fact, if you use its high resolution.

(Note: This picture will be displayed correctly if you have an LCD monitor with the order of pixels RGB.

Note translator:
1. Quote from Wikipedia: A single pixel on a color LCD consists of three color elements that (in different displays) follow the order of blue, green, and red (BGR), or red, green, and blue (RGB). For the human eye, these pixel components, sometimes called subpixels, have one color due to optical blurring and spatial integration of nerve cells. If desired, you can see them with a magnifying glass.
2. Monitors with BGR-order is much less than with RGB.

Otherwise, it will look different and wrong.)
')

(Approx. Translator: something happened to my graphic editors, so the comments on the picture will provide the text, in the order of "top down")

1. the difference between bold and non-fat is more subtle, so it will be on print
2. well rounded bottom at “g”
3. blurry "i" ...
4. ... and "e"
5. non-greasy text is brighter than it should look like on print
6. the curl at "g" is inscribed in a straight line
7. “I” clear
8. strip in the middle of "e" moved up

The difference originates from Apple's programs for printing and graphic design. The advantage of the Apple algorithm is that you can prepare a text page for publication, and you will see almost the same thing on the screen as when printing. This is especially important when you figure out how dark the text looks. The mechanism of Microsoft, which rigidly inserts fonts into pixels, means that they do not object to thin lines that eliminate blurry edges, even if because of this a whole paragraph of text looks brighter than print.

The advantage of the Microsoft method is that it is better for those who read from the screen. Microsoft pragmatically decided that the font style is not a shrine, but the sharpness of the text for easy reading is more important than the design idea regarding its brightness. In fact, fonts released by Microsoft (for example, Georgia and Verdana) are good on display, but not so hot on print.

On the contrary, Apple, as usual, followed the path of style, putting art above practicality, because Steve Jobs has a taste; at the same time, Microsoft has chosen the path of convenience, a measurable pragmatic way of creating things that are absolutely lacking panache. In other words, if Apple is Target, then Microsoft is Wal-Mart (a translator’s retail chain, a girlfriend with an economic education suggested that the appropriate ABC would be the “Alphabet of Taste” - “Crossroads”).

Now, what about human preferences. Yesterday's Jeff Atwood's post about comparing two font technologies caused the expected hot controversy: Apple users prefer Apple system, Windows users prefer Microsoft system. This is not just ordinary fanboism; this is a reflection of the fact that when you ask untrained people to choose a particular style or design, they will prefer what they already know. And so in everything: as long as they do not know exactly what they need, they will choose what they have already seen.

Obviously, therefore, Apple engineers certainly feel that they are doing a great service to the Windows community by providing "excellent" font rendering technology to "pagans"; It also explains why Windows users mostly think that Safari fonts are blurred and look weird, they don’t know why, but they don’t like it. They think “Wow! This is something else. I do not like it. Hmm, what's the matter? We must take a closer look ... Aah, some kind of fuzzy font. That's probably why. "