Re: Text anti-aliasing on the Mac

This great article from Smashing magazijne claims there is no support for
 hinting on OSX:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/24/a-closer-look-at-font-rendering/

Rik

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 1:07 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:

> More investigation into this issue has shown that the problem is
> different than what I explained at the start of the page.  It's not
> *really* about the AA.  However, a proprietary property we have
> (-webkit-font-smoothing) which lets you switch between AA modes *also*
> has the effect of turning hinting on or off.  Chrome 22 changed that,
> so that it no longer had this side effect.
>
> I'm still investigating the problem in more detail, but it seems like
> the "dilation" of text that makes it look fat and bold is an intrinsic
> property of the Mac's hinting engine.  That's why, back when
> "-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased" turned off hinting, it solved
> people's problem - the text now looked like it did on other platforms
> (not fat).
>
> roc, does your always-on text shaping mean that you do your own
> hinting, rather than relying on the system to do it for you?  If so,
> that would explain why Firefox hasn't had to deal with the issue - it
> simply doesn't exist there!
>
> ~TJ
>
>