Rendering changed in beta6

[sammilucia]

So I uninstalled β6 and reinstalled β5 just to see if I could get the same results I did originally before I installed β6, and was happy to see I did. In this screenshot you can see that the top and bottom samples are identical, both rendered with β5 and ChicoThorn-1.ini. The center samples are rendered with (β6) and ChicoThorn-1.ini. It's interesting that the larger sample fonts are clearer with β5, but the Segoe UI caption text is clearer with β6 — the color Segoe UI caption are also brighter with β6... Not sure where to go next to bring the best of both all together... ???

Older Thorn Fonts· Comparison of reinstalled b5 & b6 rendering with ChicoThorn-1.zip

Originally posted by @ChicoThorn in https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype/issues/518#issuecomment-503781564

[sammilucia]

Hi @ChicoThorn, I've split this into a new issue to make it easier to track.

Thaaattt'sss interesting.... Well caught! You could be our quality tester.

You are correct, to my eye the top and bottom samples are the same. If they are, and I sum the inverse of these two samples, we should expect to see grey. So let's do it...

Yep, 100%, featureless grey. They are the same.

Let's inverse and sum the beta6 rendering...

HMM! That's not intended. Assuming they were rendered in the exact same position on the screen, they should also sum to grey. But even if they're in different positions, the difference should not be that much. The stroke weight has changed (at least).

But is this FreeType or DirectWrite? The Windows Settings > Fonts looks to me to be DirectWrite. So has DirectWrite changed somehow?

@snowie2000 thoughts?

[ChicoThorn]

That IS interesting... I've now reinstalled β6 so I can work on it too and keep up... do you think tweaking the DirectWrite settings in the ini file might help? Also, while I was looking for the "β" in Character Map I noticed the dialog box text was poorly rendered and that the font replacement I had set up in MacType (replace Tahoma with Segoe UI) wasn't working. If you have suggestions for me to try some different scenarios to help troubleshoot any or all of this I'm happy to help. 🙂

Beta6 CharacterMap dialog· malformed text.zip

[sammilucia]

That does look like Tahoma to me 😜

[snowie2000]

As I expected, the font tab of the settings app is rendered with DirectWrite. Not sure what has changed in between the two versions.

Never tried the ChicoThorn-1.ini profile. Trying it now.

[snowie2000]

@ChicoThorn You can clearly see that the font substitution is effective.

[snowie2000]

For the font dialog part, could please share your testing font with me? In a way you believe is suitable, of course.

[ChicoThorn]

Sure, I'd be happy to. It's a "customized" version of Segoe UI with glyphs I've created. I replaced some of the punctuation, math, symbol and diacritical glyphs with my own. (You'll notice both brace glyphs are mirrored lightning bolts, so don't let that throw you when you see them in your registry).

Most of the customized glyphs are proprietary, so please don't share the font publicly (in house between testers is fine — I will email you the font rather than posting it here). I try to keep this font current with the latest Microsoft update on the Segoe UI font, but right now I'm one version behind (mine is 5.61, the most current is 5.62)... in the past changes in the version number usually means Microsoft added new language glyphs; rarely are the English alpha-numeric glyphs altered. I just checked both and there are 49 new language glyphs in 5.62; all of which appear to be Middle Eastern and/or Asian language additions.

A couple of things to keep in mind: I've given my font a filename that's different, but the internal font name remains "Segoe UI." Therefore, installing my font will "replace" your standard Segoe UI font (which is why it shows up throughout the UI once installed.) So keep a copy of your original Segoe UI so you can go back to it when you want. Also when I designed the glyphs I used a grid that would maximize their appearance in the ClearType Windows environment. I've noticed since experimenting with MacType that I will need to retweak some of the glyph positions to better match the scheme used by MacType to pixelate the glyphs.

[ChicoThorn]

I rechecked how Character Map is displaying after seeing your screenshots and mine is still incorrect — displaying Tahoma with very poor spacing (referring only to the dialog box text, not the sample text in the main window). 🤔

Beta6 2-CharacterMap dialog· malformed text.zip

[snowie2000]

Is this what you expected? If it is, it should be wrong from the begin, because Microsoft is playing a bad joke on us.

Do you know that there is also a built-in official fontsubstitutes function inside Windows? I never knew that before, and here it is: The fonts in the charmap dialog are MS Shell Dlg and MS Shell Dlg 2 instead of Microsoft Sans Serif and Tahoma.

I'll take care of it in the next version.

[ChicoThorn]

While the kinks are being worked out with beta6, I've gone back to beta5 for daily use. The results I'm getting with the ChicoThorn-1 settings and beta5 are about 95% perfect (IMHO). There are some weird things here and there; for example Character Map looks better in beta5 than the sample I showed you earlier using beta6, but it's still not quite right as you can see in the screenshot below.

Check out the two side by side comparisons between beta5 and beta6 of some of my round glyphs on the desktop and similar glyphs as displayed in the blue jumplist to their right. In beta5 both the glyphs on the desktop and those in the jumplist are near right on the mark! But you can see in beta6 the jumplist glyphs just aren't being rendered at all.

It's interesting to me that we're all getting so many different results... I wonder why that is? Computer hardware differences? Configuration? Software? OS versions? —— Oh, and speaking of OS versions, just yesterday we Windows Insiders in the Fast ring got the latest 20H1 build: 18922. The screenshots below were all taken after installing 18922.

beta5-ChicoThorn-1 Jumplist & Desktop Comparison of b5 & b6.zip

[ChicoThorn]

Is this what you expected? If it is, it should be wrong from the begin, because Microsoft is playing a bad joke on us.

The fonts in the charmap dialog are MS Shell Dlg and MS Shell Dlg 2 instead of Microsoft Sans Serif and Tahoma.

I'll take care of it in the next version.

Yes! That Character Map is totally what I expected! That's so much better! Did you get that result just by making that change in the Registry? I'm gonna give 'er a go! Thanks Snowie! 😊

[snowie2000]

These are not the changes I made. They are there from the beginning.

To archive the result, you need to add substitutions for MS Shell Dlg and MS Shell Dlg 2 together with Tahoma

On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 12:44 Thorn Hart notifications@github.com wrote:

Is this what you expected? If it is, it should be wrong from the begin, because Microsoft is playing a bad joke on us.

Do you know that there is also a built-in official fontsubstitutes function inside Windows? I never knew that before, and here it is: [image: fs] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/11767189/59894523-71708600-9413-11e9-9d93-9b5f5c29b5a0.png The fonts in the charmap dialog are MS Shell Dlg and MS Shell Dlg 2 instead of Microsoft Sans Serif and Tahoma.

I'll take care of it in the next version.

Yes! That Character Map is totally what I expected! That's so much better! Did you get that result just by making that change in the Registry? I'm gonna give 'er a go! Thanks Snowie! 😊

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[sammilucia]

Yes, DirectWrite is not working for me in beta6 either

This is DirectWrite settings of:

GammaValue=1.4
Contrast=0
ClearTypeLevel=1.0
RenderingMode=5

and

RenderingMode=5
GammaValue=1.4
Contrast=0.625
ClearTypeLevel=0.75

Inverted then added together ... the result is pure grey, so I don't think DirectWrite settings are doing anything ... 🤔

[snowie2000]

Did you delete the svchost.exe from Mactype.ini? It shouldn’t be there after all.

On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 13:03 Samantha Glocker notifications@github.com wrote:

Yes, DirectWrite is not working for me in beta6 either

This is DirectWrite settings of:

GammaValue=1.4

Contrast=0

ClearTypeLevel=1.0

RenderingMode=5

and

RenderingMode=5

GammaValue=1.4

Contrast=0.625

ClearTypeLevel=0.75

Inverted then added together ... the result is pure grey, so I don't think DirectWrite settings are doing anything ... 🤔

[image: image] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/3295286/59898681-0fbf1480-9431-11e9-9415-7faadd709a83.png

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[sammilucia]

Nope! svchost.exe is in MacType.ini ... how did that get in there??

[sammilucia]

Is there anything else that shouldn't be in there?

[snowie2000]

From your “final commit”ﾍ😈ﾍ

On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 13:06 Samantha Glocker notifications@github.com wrote:

Nope! svchost.exe is in MacType.ini ... how did that get in there??

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[snowie2000]

I checked the whole list and I think that other exclusions are fine.

[sammilucia]

Yep that was it!

Dammit that's in the pinned exclusions Issue #523

[ChicoThorn]

So I made changes in the FontSubstitutes in Registry — and it worked! 😃 Check out Character Map now! Also included a screenshot of my Registry changes...

beta5-ChicoThorn-1 After FontSubstitutes Change - Character Map.zip

beta5-ChicoThorn-1 FontSubstitutes Change.zip

[snowie2000]

So how do we call the hotfix version? Beta 6.1?🙃

[sammilucia]

beta7 .... Or I just make a note in the release notes?

Can you please let me know anything else that should (or shouldn't) be in the default mactype.ini

[snowie2000]

Or just re-release the beta6. I think it’s not a big deal. I think it’s fine to leave all the other processes in the list.

[ChicoThorn]

@sammilucia, since you're going to do some changes in the beta6 release, would you mind changing the name of my ini file to "ChicoThorn.ini" (I don't think it really needs the -1)... Thank you! 😊

[sammilucia]

@ChicoThorn it is done 😊

[ChicoThorn]

@sammilucia , Thank you!

[sammilucia]

@snowie2000 it is done, O great leader 😊

[sammilucia]

@snowie2000 i've unpinned the MacType.ini exclusions #523 because it's dangerous to list lots of software in there in my opinion for exactly this reason.

Closing issue!

[sammilucia]

Thanks again @ChicoThorn for alerting to this issue so quickly 😊 😊

[ChicoThorn]

My pleasure! — And thank you @sammilucia and @snowie2000 for tackling such a monumental project! So many folks in the PC world are going to be overjoyed when they finally have options to the awful font rendering provided by our buddies at Microsoft! 😉

[sammilucia]

It's a pleasure 😊. I've been using this since like, GDI++ (or something) lol. I can't live without it 😂

Your attention to detail and eye for detail is so great - I was wondering if you'd like to join our little dev team of 2 (to make it 3) and be MacType's quality tester?

[ChicoThorn]

I would be honored! Wow! Sure! Count me in! 😃 Just let me know what/how you'd like me to help out and I will do my best!

[ChicoThorn]

@sammilucia ...just curious, will you be posting when the updated beta6 will be ready to download and try out? I'm excited to see how it works now!

[sammilucia]

It's already done ;) https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype/releases/tag/2019.1-beta6

[ChicoThorn]

Awesome! Downloading now! 😁

[sammilucia]

Please let me know how it goes?

[ChicoThorn]

I will! (I feel like a kid at Christmas! lol!) — Back in a bit after installing and testing... 🙂

[snowie2000]

Waiting for the final "judgment"... and dealing with the font substitution now.

[ChicoThorn]

Drum roll please...

Okay! Break out the Champagne! We have a winner!! Check out this screenshot showing four of the trouble spots: Character Map, Jumplist, Settings App and Notifications Panel — ALL look great! 🎉🎈😃

beta6-NEW -ChicoThorn CharMap, Jumplist, Settings, NavPane .zip

[ChicoThorn]

The jumplist is the "chunkiest" — you can still see hard-edged artifacts here and there — but the circle-shaped glyphs are no longer flattened, they're the proper shape overall... so maybe a little more fine-tuning to the profile ini's DirectWrite settings will correct that?

[snowie2000]

Could you do a side by side comparison with the default Windows Cleartype rendering?

PS: I found an official article talking about fontlinking and fontsubsititution: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/globalization/input/font-technology

[ChicoThorn]

Sure!

[sammilucia]

I really do like your INI @Thorn!

On Fri, 21 Jun 2019 at 16:26, Thorn Hart notifications@github.com wrote:

Sure!

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[ChicoThorn]

Thanks @sammilucia ! — Here is the side by side comparison of the default ClearType (MacType was uninstalled when I took this screenshot) versus the new beta6 ChicoThorn.ini...

I look at the ClearType now and wonder two things: 1) How could I have put up with such ugly text rendering for so long... and 2) Why would Microsoft dare call their scheme "Clear"Type? More like "ClunkyType" to me! lol!

Side by Side Comparison - ClearType v MacType - Windows & Dialogs.zip

[snowie2000]

@ChicoThorn Thank you, your profile looks great

ClearType is very clear if you know what I found when I was looking for information about the fontsubtitution in the registry: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-desktop/how-to-change-system-default-font-in-all-parts/dfce15db-7337-420a-a42e-517521a8502e

A group of people was talking about completely disabling the ClearType and replace everything back to Tahoma, yeah, the font you hate. If ClearType is BS, Windows without ClearType is genuinely a big chunk of LED display. I mean, this kind of thing:

[ChicoThorn]

😂 That's hilarious and so true!

Just for the fun of it, I changed my scaling to 110 to see how it rendered... here is the result... it's not too bad, but gets a little 'foggy' around the small bowls on the "e" and "a" especially. But I kinda like it... 🙂

beta6 NEW - ChicoThorn @ 110% scaling (2).zip

[ChicoThorn]

Just out of curiosity ... which time zone are you guys in? I'm in PDT (Pacific Daylight Time — UTC -07:00) It just turned 1am here...

[snowie2000]

Windows DirectWrite has improved a lot but still struggles with small sized fonts.

[snowie2000]

@sammilucia and I were in the same time zone, and it's 4pm in GMT+8. She should be in EST or the like now, and also midnight there I believe.

[ChicoThorn]

Good to know! We overlap a bit then! I tend to be a night owl, so I'm often burning the midnight petroleum (as Data was fond of saying).

I can't get over how FANTASTIC all the text looks on my screen now! I like using dark mode pretty much everywhere I can, but certain windows are still light anyway (Control Panel), Cortana's pop-out pane, etc. And the rendering on those surfaces is excellent as well! 😊

beta6 NEW - ChicoThorn - Cortana & Control Panel.zip