Windows 8 Font Issues?

[hrant]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

If I upgrade to Windows 8, what kinds of font-related issues should I expect to run into? Specifically in terms of making (and testing) fonts. (No Mac jokes please. :-)

hhp

[John Hudson]

The most notable difference between Windows 8 and previous versions, in terms of fonts, is the new assymetric greyscale with subpixel positioning rendering in the Metro environment. The good news about this is that it is considerably better than I feared, and still manages to provide better stroke density than Apple's full fuzz rendering.

[hrant]

Cool.
What about font tools (not working [right])?

hhp

[Jeremy Dooley]

In windows 7, you could re-install fonts and have the new version appear after restarting Adobe apps. Now that no longer works, and you have to restart to get updated fonts to appear. I don't use any font management tools. Fontlab works just fine.

[HVB]

"Upgrade" from what and to what flavour of Windows 8? You'll encounter many more differences if you're coming from XP to 64-bit Windows 8 than if you moving from Win 7 to Win 8.

I just unhappily moved from Windows XP to Windows 7 Home Premium (64) and find that almost none of my favourite command line utilities are functional. I may upgrade to Windows 7 Professional - they SAY that some of the 32-bit/64-bit incompatibilities are resolved, as is better support for compatibility with older Windows versions.

- Herb

[hrant]

I'll be getting a new laptop - and it's hard to find a Win7 system (plus I've heard horror stories about downgrading OSes, and it would cost more). My current one (which is a dinosaur, but it's the king of dinosaurs) is running XP (like a rock) and at least I can see all the rendering problems so many users see but so many foundries look away from... But anyway I use Win7 systems often, and I like it. BTW I've heard good things about Win8 in terms of backwards compatibility; and the other day I connected a funky no-name external DVD drive into a Win8 ultrabook and it "just worked" within seconds.

Concerning what Jeremy said: I wonder if a font management tool fixes that issue; but I really don't want to resort to one.

hhp

[Jeremy Dooley]

The good thing is that my win 8 computer (and most, I assume, as this machine is new, albeit with middling specs) reboots in 10 seconds, so it is not a huge deal. That is not an exaggeration. A SSD in hybrid mode is amazing.

[oldnick]

As I understand it, Windows 8 deals primarily with touch-screen issues, so there's no need to upgrade if you're running a Grandpa Box, like me. One thing I find especially appealing about Win7 64-bit Pro is its virtual machines: you can run programs as old as Windows 95 (maybe even older) in their own space, no sweat.

[HVB]

Nick - AFAIK, that's true for Win7 Professional, but not l
esser versions.

- Herb

[Richard Fink]

@hrant
Laptopisaurus Rex, eh? Mine died some months back but I had already received a Dell with Win7 that I had ordered in anticipation of the dreaded passing of ol' reliable.

The Win7 Dell Latitude has the "XP Mode" virtual machine installed and I've found it best to just migrate everything font related to XP. Win7 gave trouble with various pieces of my font workflow from the get-go so I just avoided the problems completely by sticking with XP running in a virtual machine.

I've tried to imagine at what point this setup will fail me but you know, I really can't see with what or how it would give me trouble.

Win7 running as the parent OS gives me access to IE9 and other upgrades that won't load in XP for testing so it's the best of both worlds so far.

[Bendy]

>the new assymetric greyscale with subpixel positioning rendering in the Metro environment

Haven't come across this, is there info anywhere, John?

[5star]

@Richard, that is exactly the setup I have with my Latitude. I also have the disc option of running a 64 or 32 bit Win7 platform.

Does your Latitude over heat? Mine gets really warm.

n.

[hrant]

Do you run 32-bit for running old software? Like what?

hhp

[John Hudson]

Ben, here is a good general description of the change in font rendering in Win8, with examples:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/138816-windows-8-the-desktop-review/3

Broadly speaking, there are now three main ClearType rendering modes (with some version-specific variations in the GDI rendering):

GDI : x-direction colour subpixel antialiasing, no y-direction antialiasing, full-pixel spacing.

DWrite : x- direction colour subpixel antialiasing, y-direction greyscale antialiasing, sub-pixel positioning.

Metro : x-direction greyscale subpixel antialiasing, y-direction greyscale antialiasing, sub-pixel positioning. [Note also: at small sizes the x,y antialiasing is asymmetric, at larger sizes it is symmetric.]

All three of these rendering environments may be encountered in Windows 8.

[canderson]

I use Classic Shell to start my Windows 8 system in desktop mode and provide a Windows 7 style start button. I don't think I could continue to use it on a laptop or desktop otherwise.

I'm not aware of any font-related compatibility differences from Windows 7.

In general, the metro interface is designed to remove features and reduce choice to make the system more useful on tablets and phones. Even for something like a mail client or a web browser, I don't want to be stuck in full screen mode on a laptop or desktop.

I'm also quite fond of having directories and files and knowing where they are in the file system.

[apankrat]

> In windows 7, you could re-install fonts and have the new version appear after restarting Adobe apps. Now that no longer works, and you have to restart to get updated fonts to appear.

I'd try removing the font first and then installing an updated version.

[Bendy]

Interesting, thanks John. I'm not clear how the Metro x-direction antialiasing is 'subpixel' since it's using only greyscale. Wasn't the whole point of ClearType that the only sub-pixel elements available are the red, green and blue components of a pixel?

[John Hudson]

Subpixel may not be the best word, or maybe I need to distinguish between sub-pixel and subpixel. I would classify Metro greyscale as sub-pixel rendering by virtue of it using supersampled outlines with fractional positioning. This means that the pixel tint is determined by where the outline falls sub-pixel.

[Bendy]

Ah, I wondered if this was the case. Does the 'asymmetric' antialiasing mean that horizontal stems are confined to full pixel positioning?

[Jens Kutilek]

Does the 'asymmetric' antialiasing mean that horizontal stems are confined to full pixel positioning?

Yes.

In DirectWrite you can control at what pixel size range(s) asymmetric/symmetric antialiasing should be applied. You need a version 1 gasp table for that and use the GASP_SYMMETRIC_SMOOTHING flag.

If a version 0 gasp table is present (or, iirc, a v 1 gasp table without the symmetric smoothing flag), symmetric smoothing will be applied from 21 ppm upwards.

[John Hudson]

Does the 'asymmetric' antialiasing mean that horizontal stems are confined to full pixel positioning?

No. In the context of Metro rendering, asymmetric refers to the difference in x- and y-direction supersampling (at text sizes). The rendering is 8x4 greyscale, meaning that the x-direction antialiasing has double the senstitivity of the y-direction antialiasing. Because of the sub-pixel fractional positioning, the x-direction benefits from this higher sampling resolution to maintain decent stroke contrast, whereas the y-direction, which is constrained to full pixels, can make do with a lower supersampling. At larger sizes, the Metro renderer switches to symmetric 4x4.

[aluminum]

This is the second time I've heard mention of the 'greyscale' rendering of sub pixels. I'm confused as to how 'greyscale' and sub-pixel rendering work together (since sub-pixels, by definition, are not greyscale).

[John Hudson]

See my response to Ben, above.

I think we should try to make a distinction between subpixels as physical divisions of a pixel and sub-pixel as fractional implementation of pixel rendering that affects outcomes. The Metro greyscale rendering is sub-pixel on the grounds that the fractional positioning of the outline affects the pixel tint.

[Bendy]

>The Metro greyscale rendering is sub-pixel on the grounds that the fractional positioning of the outline affects the pixel tint.

This is what I'm not quite getting. Isn't that true of all anti-aliasing?

[aluminum]

I understand sub pixel...in that only parts of a pixel may be used to render the outline on screen. And because it's not a 'whole' pixel, it will be colored. That's why I don't understand the term 'greyscale' being used to describe it.