Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!reed!rbrewer
From: rbrewer@reed.UUCP (Robert S. Brewer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac II and VGA  (icky-poo, IBM stuff)
Keywords: Zenith FTM Mac II Board RasterOps
Message-ID: <12542@reed.UUCP>
Date: 25 Apr 89 02:28:00 GMT
References: <1531@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> <8264@chinet.chi.il.us> <492@biar.UUCP> <10787@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: rbrewer@reed.UUCP (Robert S. Brewer)
Organization: Reed College, Portland OR
Lines: 33

In article <10787@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> captkidd@athena.mit.edu (Ivan Cavero Belaunde) writes:
|Actually, I kinda wish Apple had standardized on a minimum of 2 or 4 bit
|QuickDraw display capability on their new machines.  Anyone who has seen
|the NeXT machine's display (or Apple's own Fuzzy Fonts, for that matter),
|will tell you that the use of grey scale type (to smooth out edges and
|the like) will improve readability SIGNIFICANTLY.  Of course you should
|still have bare bones B/W available (via Monitors CDEV) for the sake of
|speed, but providing a minimum 2-bit or even 4-bit greyscale capability
|on the SE/30 would have gone very far in promoting standarization to
|antialiased fonts.  As it remains, Fuzzy Fonts is an year-old technology that
|hasn't been used at all (since only the II line supports it - the SE/30
|has Color QD in ROM, but not the display capability) and will take a while
|for it to reappear.  Apple should place this up there with outline fonts,
|however.  So, no, I don't think 2- and 4- bit modes were a waste of time,
|I just wish there was more outspoken support from Apple for these.
|
|-Ivan

I agree that Apple should release antialiased fonts, but you are incorrect on
two points. The NeXT machine does not have antialiased fonts, and may not in
the future. Also antialiased fonts are several years old at least, there was
considerable work done on them at the MIT Media Lab.

There was a new font editing program released at August '88 MacWorld called
FRed Font editor that claimed to automatically antialias fonts (there was a
nice picture to go along with it). If someone had this program, it seems they
could easily whip off antialiased versions of all kinds of fonts. If they were
Apple fonts, there might be some question of legality, but for PD fonts it
would be no problem.
-- 
Robert S. Brewer       Bitnet: RBREWER@REED.BITNET, Usenet: rbrewer@reed.UUCP 
Student at Reed College                             GEnie : R.BREWER
                "That was not manual overide." -Commander Data