Glyph Anti-aliasing not turned on?

[leech]

I usually don't really notice this much, since I'm always in a resolution of 1600x1200, but one day when I was running a program that switched to 800x600, I noticed that the text still looks normal. I do have the Glyph Antialiasing checked in Powerdesk, but the text is still normal. (I know they're not anti-aliased because I've seen how that looks in Gnome 2) Any ideas? Here's some screenshots. You might have to zoom in on them.



Leech

[Randy Simons]

Just curious: does the P still have PixelTOUCH? If so, that'll be much easier/quicker than switchin resolutions
If not: WHY???!!!! PixelTOUCH rules!

But in W2K, font-antialiasing kicks in above and below a certain font-size. With normal sizes, you won't see it. Perhaps the P has something similar?

[az]

This is the case in Win9x too, so I don't think it's a P limitation. Try font size 20 - anti-aliasing will be noticeable when on (and especially when off )

I think there was a way to change those font size limitations, maybe someone else here knows where (and if?).

AZ

[leech]

Actually I was being a dumbass. I had to enable ClearType fonts in XP. Just open up display properties, go to "Appearance" then change method to smooth fonts. Works like a charm. So is this done in Hardware?

[Edit] Forgot to mention, I saw this somewhere (either on MURC or Matrox Tech Support) that said to get Glyph enabled, you had to enable the ClearType Font smoothing.

Leech

[Chucky Cheese]

Glyph

on my machine, when i turn glyph AA on...it turns clear type off!! is this normal behavior?? as far as quality goes on my panels...glyph off with clear type on looks the best. here is my display setup -

Video - Matrox Parhelia - 512

Displays - Dual Head Configuration

Pri. - Samsung 210T (21.3" TFT) - DVI - Connector A
Sec. - Samsung 210T (21.3" TFT) - DVI - Connector B

both displays are running at 1280 x 1024 32Bit @75 Hz

cc

[Chucky Cheese]

UPDATE

samsung tech support just emailed me and said that the owners manual is in error, and that 1600 x 1200 is the max(..native) while in digital(..DVI)...so i set that res(1600 x 1200 32 Bit @ 60Hz) with large dpi for fonts. everything looks fantastic!!!

cc

[leech]

Re: Glyph

Originally posted by Chucky Cheese
on my machine, when i turn glyph AA on...it turns clear type off!! is this normal behavior?? as far as quality goes on my panels...glyph off with clear type on looks the best. here is my display setup -

Video - Matrox Parhelia - 512

Displays - Dual Head Configuration

Pri. - Samsung 210T (21.3" TFT) - DVI - Connector A
Sec. - Samsung 210T (21.3" TFT) - DVI - Connector B

both displays are running at 1280 x 1024 32Bit @75 Hz

cc

Ok, "This Matrox control and the Windows control are linked so that they're both enabled and disabled at the same time." is what it says in the Powerdesk help. So if cleartype is on, Matrox Glyph Antialiasing is off, and vice versa. Anyone from Matrox want to clarify this? it looks a lot better on my 21" Hewlett Packard P1100 monitor (1600x1200@85hz) with Cleartype enabled as well.


This is with cleartype on, compare it to the above screenshot with Matrox's Glyph Antialiasing on. Also take note that with The glyph AA on, the Matrox Powerdesk's text is all AA'd but none of the rest of the text on screen is. Also I had put the fontsize as large.

Leech

[leech]

Originally posted by az
This is the case in Win9x too, so I don't think it's a P limitation. Try font size 20 - anti-aliasing will be noticeable when on (and especially when off )

AZ

Yeah, I've seen the anti-aliased fonts in XFree86. And they make a HUGE difference, especially on my laptop (with a max resolution of 1024x768) Even in 1600x1200 it makes a huge difference. In windows XP I couldn't see a actual Point size, just Normal, Large, Extremely Large. I tried all of them and the Glyph AA only works on the Matrox Powerdesk, nothing else it seems is effected. :-(

Leech

[leech]

Originally posted by Randy Simons
Just curious: does the P still have PixelTOUCH? If so, that'll be much easier/quicker than switchin resolutions
If not: WHY???!!!! PixelTOUCH rules!

But in W2K, font-antialiasing kicks in above and below a certain font-size. With normal sizes, you won't see it. Perhaps the P has something similar?

Yes, PixelTOUCH is still there (was using it to look at the AA fonts close up. :-)

Leech

[Chucky Cheese]

question

so, glyph is broke ?????????


cc

[az]

Leech, try opening any word processor and writing at 16 pt size

I think this "normal, large, extra large" stuff from windows is a percentage of what the fonts would normally be - 100, 125, and 150% or something like that - so point size will stay the same.

AZ

[DGhost]

as has been stated in many other places, Glyph AA does not accelerate ClearType. it accelerates the standard font smoothing that is included in Windows 2000 and XP, but not clear type.

[leech]

Originally posted by az
Leech, try opening any word processor and writing at 16 pt size

I think this "normal, large, extra large" stuff from windows is a percentage of what the fonts would normally be - 100, 125, and 150% or something like that - so point size will stay the same.

AZ

You're 100% right. I tried out different font sizes in Wordpad, and even (going through the advanced options in the Display properties -> Appearance and changed the Font size of the Icons to 14 and it worked. So the question is, why only 14+ point size fonts? Here goes some screenshots for a comparison.

ClearType;


Matrox Glyph Anti-Aliasing


I saved these as PNG's because Jpg's compression totally messed them up. You can see an almost reddish blur around the ClearType text. At least I can. Tell me what you all think.

Leech

[az]

ClearType looks WAY better for the smaller fonts, but GAA looks better on the 14+ pt. sized ones

It's a shame you can't have ct for smaller fonts and gaa for larger ones. Maybe we could beg Matrox to add functionality like that in the driver? Then they would truly be the kings of 2d again

AZ

[leech]

I agree. I wonder if the reason that Matrox doesn't enable it for the smaller font sizes is because of the strange coloring effect. Though on the font sizes it does support it still doesn't have the coloring effect that ClearType does. Guess we'll wait and see. I'm still wondering why when switching between GAA and ClearType that my Icons in my systray (at least my Mozilla and Matrox ones) became distorted. Guess I'll have to reboot. Stupid XP.

Leech