Font anti-aliasing in Windows 2000 and XP

[malinuo]

When I open a document with Chinese characters in for example Word or Open Office and change the display in the word processor to 150%, there often seems to be no anti-aliasing at all. The characters are cracked and broken and often very difficult to read.

One way to fix this seems to be to change the font. SimSun regular 12 looks awful (last three characters in the attached image). SimSun bold 16 looks ok at 150% (first three characters in the attached image). Adobe Ming and Adobe Song seem ok at any size. Latin text (except accented pinyin) usually looks ok.

I don't want to change the font in every document I open. The original fonts were usually chosen for a reason, and the print outs look ok regardless of font.

On my Mac with MacOS X 10.4 I never have any problem like this. About every single font looks nice in all sizes.

Does anyone know if there is a setting in Windows I have missed somewhere, or is Windows really this bad in this respect?

[stephanhodges]

Couple things would help to pin down the problem.

1) Attach a small example document with the text.

2) Tell us what version of Windows you are using. Also, which version of Word?

3) How does it look when printed? Also, set different font sizes in the document and print that way too.

4) What resolution is your monitor

5) What graphics card are you using, and do you have the most recent manufacturer's drivers installed? (This is more important than many people realize).

6) If you are using a laptop, or an LCD display, have you turned on ClearType?

Fonts have internal adjustments for each character (called "hints"), and some fonts aren't as good as others at some sizes.

[malinuo]

Thanks for your answer!

1) Attach a small example document with the text.

Done.

2) Tell us what version of Windows you are using. Also, which version of Word?

Windows 2000 and XP as the title of this thread. Word 2002. OpenOffice 2.0.

3) How does it look when printed? Also, set different font sizes in the document and print that way too.

As mentioned above, "the print outs look ok regardless of font."

4) What resolution is your monitor

1280 * 1024.

5) What graphics card are you using, and do you have the most recent manufacturer's drivers installed? (This is more important than many people realize).

Intel 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset on the machine I have in front of me right now. There may be newer ones out there. I'm not really sure how to check. But I know that someone installed what was the latest one on this machine a few months ago.

6) If you are using a laptop, or an LCD display, have you turned on ClearType?

Not consciously. Could you tell me where to check it? It is an LCD display (HP1740).

simsun.doc

[malinuo]

I found cleartype according to standard help:

To use ClearType for screen fonts

Open Display in Control Panel.

On the Appearance tab, click Effects.

In the Effects dialog box, select the Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box.

Click ClearType in the list.

That seems to have solved it! Thanks!

[stephanhodges]

Sorry I couldn't answer earlier. I normally only check these boards from work, but I wasn't at work much last Friday, so that meant a 3 day gap.

Since printing was OK, I was pretty sure it would either be a poorly designed font (bad hints at certain resolutions), or perhaps cleartype tuning.

Very glad that you solved it on your own.