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SmoothText 1.1.8


WildBill

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Hullo there WildBill !... I have a few remarks\\\\questions :

1- This is /not/ intended for CRT monitors, right ? I mean, subpixel antialiasing is what this does ?

2- The configure... option opens a box with copyright info; no configuration options on my system.

Is this intended, for later enhancements maybe ?

Tried it nonetheless on my CRT.

3- subjectively it doesn't make the fonts better looking in Firefox.

Does add some strange effects :=)

In console fonts, letter "k" disappears out entirely :=(

I guess smoothtext is not for me at the moment. If any of this is of use to you, so much the better !

Cheers

--

Ninho

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Yup, it's just for LCD's. It's great for laptops, but what made me really push hard on it was when I got rid of my CRT and bought an LCD monitor (a BIG one!)

You're right, the options panel doesn't do anything yet, it's there in case I need to add options. It's been a really low priority, and since no one has suggested any options, I've left it alone.

For some reason Courier doesn't like being scaled to 3x horizontally and it doesn't render properly. I suspect it's a bug in how Windows handles font hinting or rendering. One possible solution would be to scale Courier differently, for instance scale 3x in both directions and scale down vertically, though this would likely add a lot of blur to it -- still, it's better than missing characters! I haven't tried it but will probably have to at some point. I wish I had a Delphi port of FreeType -- that would solve a lot of problems, but it's so much code to port that I haven't attempted it.

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I've decided to take a whack at the next version and I have version 0.2.3 treating Courier differently so that it doesn't drop any characters. It scales the entire font up proportionally and then condenses it back down. The downside is that it introduces some blur into the font. For now I'm only doing it with Courier New. I might limit it further to specific point sizes, but first I need to build in a way to save settings (maybe into the registry?) The Configure... popup might come in handy after all...

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I ran into a situation where I needed SmoothText to be as fast as possible, so I put a lot of effort into optimization. I sped up the existing code base, added support for using MMX if possible, and added support for using SSE2 if possible (so if you have a Pentium 4, for instance, it will use the SSE code, and if you have something earlier it will use MMX code if it can). It's MUCH faster now and I can honestly recommend it for general use. I can still see areas for improvement, but I'm VERY happy with how it's turned out.

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LOL, just when I thought I couldn't make it any faster, I made it just a little bit more efficient. As usual, I've edited the top post with a description and updated download link to version 0.2.6.

It also looks like disabled text in Explorer toolbars is fixed now, and the MS Word left-margin ruler. I'm not entirely sure what I did to fix it, but I suspect it's that the SSE2 and MMX code isn't forcing a 0FFh alpha value anymore but is simply using what was already there.

Edited by WildBill
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Does now work with MS Office XP (Word 2002). The entire documents get messed up. No Font displays correctly at all.

Also, though works well with Netscape 9, slows down scrolling significantly.

(using MS Windows 2000 Pro on IBM Thinkpad T23 - 1.2 GHz with 1GB RAM).

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Hmm. I only have Office 2000. Can you post a small screenshot so I can see what's going on? Also, what kind of CPU do you have? That would help me narrow it down a bit so I know whether to look at the MMX, SSE2, etc. code.

Edited by WildBill
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I'd like to post a screen shot but I cannot figure out how to get it below 200MB size.

Let me know another way to get you the screenshots

System Info:

System Information report written at: 10/10/2008 12:09:44 PM

[system Summary]

Item Value

OS Name Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional

Version 5.0.2195 Service Pack 4 Build 2195

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Name MAYER-IBM-T23

System Manufacturer IBM

System Model 26473U5

System Type X86-based PC

Processor x86 Family 6 Model 11 Stepping 1 GenuineIntel ~1198 Mhz

BIOS Version Ver 1.00PARTTBL

Windows Directory C:\WINNT

System Directory C:\WINNT\system32

Boot Device \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1

Locale United States

User Name MAYER-IBM-T23\SMAYER

Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time

Total Physical Memory 1,047,536 KB

Available Physical Memory 678,304 KB

Total Virtual Memory 2,780,192 KB

Available Virtual Memory 2,109,304 KB

Page File Space 1,732,656 KB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

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Noticed a couple more problems:

1. Cursor lags text being typed as it gets further to right in a text box like the one I'm typing this message in. Also the text kind of disappears "into" the cursor (and I do not actually see the text being typed the further to the right I goe, i.e. text to the right of the cursor does not show up.at all but it is thereif if I try to edit it.

2. Also sometimes crashes if I try to scroll Netscape with my built-in Trackpoinnt

Edited by smayer97
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