Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!apple!casseres
From: casseres@Apple.COM (David Casseres)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Gray-scale antialiasing
Keywords: anti-aliasing text
Message-ID: <174@internal.Apple.COM>
Date: 31 Oct 88 23:16:44 GMT
References: <74013@sun.uucp> <148@internal.Apple.COM> <4763@mnetor.UUCP> <11206@cgl.ucsf.EDU> <1837@ogccse.ogc.edu>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 23

In article <1837@ogccse.ogc.edu> wm@cse.ogc.edu (Wm Leler) writes:

>I am constantly amazed that anti-aliased text has not become the norm.
>It works (very well).  It is cheap to implement (cheaper than raising
>the pixel resolution of the display).

As to how well it works, the jury is still out.  In spite of the enthusiasm
of its supporters, the question of the *readability* of anti-aliased text
remains open.  There is no doubt that it *looks* terrific, and there is
some evidence that its *legibility* (distinction between character pairs)
is good.  But very few people have ever spent any significant amount
of time actually reading screens full of anti-aliased text.

As to its being cheap to implement, it's true there is less hardware cost
in anti-aliasing than there is in greater pixel density.  But until someone
makes a breakthrough or two, it requires some very intense computation
right where you don't want it, i.e. right in the middle of your character-
display loop where it trashes your display performance.

It looks to me like anti-aliasing is about where OCR was until recently: it
sounds like a great idea, everyone wants it, and lots of people will tell
you it's here, but it isn't.

David Casseres