Turn of anti-aliasing??

[SteveC]

Hi all,

I am a new cybook gen3 user. firmware 1.4. First e-ink reader I have used, after using mobipocket on a VGA pocketPC for a couple of years

Have just started reading my first novel and already I am wishing I could turn off text anti-aliasing.

The blurb claims it makes text appear to be higher resolution, but to my eyes it just makes it look blurry and badly printed. I find it tiring to read, presumably because my eyes are trying to focus on something that isn't in focus in the first place. I find myself using a bigger font than normal in order to compensate. The embolden feature just makes it bold and blurry

I would love to turn off anti-aliasing and have crisp black text, at the expense of being more pixellated. The paginator display at the bottom of the screen is rendered with 1:1 pixels and is crisp and black. I would like text to look the same

anyone else feel the same??

any chance this will make it into a future firmware??

Steve

[magiske]

Have you tried to use another font ?

Originally Posted by SteveC

Hi all,

I am a new cybook gen3 user. firmware 1.4. First e-ink reader I have used, after using mobipocket on a VGA pocketPC for a couple of years

Have just started reading my first novel and already I am wishing I could turn off text anti-aliasing.

The blurb claims it makes text appear to be higher resolution, but to my eyes it just makes it look blurry and badly printed. I find it tiring to read, presumably because my eyes are trying to focus on something that isn't in focus in the first place. I find myself using a bigger font than normal in order to compensate. The embolden feature just makes it bold and blurry

I would love to turn off anti-aliasing and have crisp black text, at the expense of being more pixellated. The paginator display at the bottom of the screen is rendered with 1:1 pixels and is crisp and black. I would like text to look the same

anyone else feel the same??

any chance this will make it into a future firmware??

Steve

[gerraldo]

Originally Posted by SteveC

Have just started reading my first novel and already I am wishing I could turn off text anti-aliasing...

...

any chance this will make it into a future firmware??

I'm afraid you can't and it won't...

But you can find some help/info HERE and HERE

(The posts are from Sony section, but as all readers use the same eInk display and TTF fonts, it's basically the same as with Cybook.)

I'm sure you'll find a font that better suits you, we all have different tastes.

BTW: I'm using Goudita Sans SF.

[SteveC]

Thanks for the font suggestions. I have tried a few and currently using the built-in Georgia.

I am certain that the e-ink screen is capable of displaying non anti-aliased text on a hardware level. Take a look at the paginator display. It is drawn with crisp individual black pixels with no anti-aliasing around them. So the screen is capable of it.

Surely the software could use a 1:1 bitmap font and achieve the same clarity with text???

Steve

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by SteveC

I am certain that the e-ink screen is capable of displaying non anti-aliased text on a hardware level. Take a look at the paginator display. It is drawn with crisp individual black pixels with no anti-aliasing around them. So the screen is capable of it.

Surely the software could use a 1:1 bitmap font and achieve the same clarity with text???

Since eInk readers sell for at least two years, your trouble with antialiasing is the first example of it I read about on those (very active) forums, and there isn't massive reaction of people saying they have the same problem, I imagine there isn't much public demand for such feature. Possibly the most easily attainable non-aliased mode on a reader would be to acquire a reader capable of running open source OpenInkpot, and add the neccessary code in it.

[tompe]

But all eInk readers does not use anti aliasing.

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by tompe

But all eInk readers does not use anti aliasing.

How do you know? With TrueType fonts it's common to use antialiasing for rendering them, and FreeType library ( http://www.freetype.org/ ) used for font rendering does so by default. It would look like a good idea to firmware authors to use such a well-tested engine for font rendering.

EDIT: typo.

[emellaich]

I assume you tried the embolden text option? I found it made a great difference in the fonts for me.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

How do you know? With TrueType fonts it's common to use antialiasing for rendering them, and FreeType library ( http://www.freetype.org/ ) used for font rendering does so by default. It would look like a good idea to firmware authors to use such a well-tested engine for font rendering.

EDIT: typo.

Well I looked at the font rendering on my Cybook

I do not think that aliasing works with so few gray scaled that the current generation of eInk readers have so it would surprise me a lot if the use of aliasing is not a mistake.