Jaggies in iBooks?

[Jack__Flack]

I downloaded a epub from one of my favorite no DRM publishers (way to go Baen!) and popped it into ibooks on my new iPad. I noticed the font has jaggies and is not at all smooth. Is this the embedded fonts bug (or something related) or a screen resolution problem or ??

I'm reading at the 'normal' size (e.g. no increased font size) and the standard palintino font. Anyone else notice that the fonts in iBooks don't seem to be as crisp as they probably should be?

[murraypaul]

The text display isn't anti-aliased, which combined with the very bright screen gives quite noticeable pixel edges.

[HarryT]

Have you tried changing the font and seeing if it looks any better with a different font? I read with the "Georgia" font, and that looks great to me.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Have you tried changing the font and seeing if it looks any better with a different font? I read with the "Georgia" font, and that looks great to me.

There's a Georgia font in iBooks?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

There's a Georgia font in iBooks?

Sorry - I'm getting confused with another App (OliveTree's "Bible Reader" - THAT has a Georgia font). I've just checked and I too am using "Palatino" in iBooks. It looks fine to me.

Apologies for the mix-up.

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

The text display isn't anti-aliased, which combined with the very bright screen gives quite noticeable pixel edges.

It is anti-aliased (in the same manner as text usually gets anti-aliased on the iPhone). But there are a couple gotchas on Apple's approach as far as I can tell:

1) Putting text on an OpenGL 3D surface has always been slightly problematic. Anti-aliasing assumes a 1:1 mapping of pixels, which isn't true in OpenGL, so you can get slight "off by a fraction of a pixel" errors which causes OpenGL to sample your rendered text and anti-alias it again, which produces even more oddities. Or if you turn off the texture AA (or it isn't available), the lack of a 1:1 mapping actually undoes some of the anti-aliasing you did when rendering the text, hardening the otherwise soft edges.

2) Apple's anti-aliasing, while it does a good job of being faithful to the typeface versus being "crisp" (like ClearType on Windows attempts to do), works best on high-DPI screens. Otherwise you get text that may appear smudged, or slightly fuzzy. The DPI on the iPad screen (130 DPI) is much lower than the current crop of e-ink screens or the iPhone (160+ DPI).

These two things conspire to make the text look worse than it needs to be.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry - I'm getting confused with another App (OliveTree's "Bible Reader" - THAT has a Georgia font). I've just checked and I too am using "Palatino" in iBooks. It looks fine to me.

Apologies for the mix-up.

I was sort of hoping there was and I had just missed it somehow.

Mike

[tyche]

Can you take a snapshot and post what you're seeing. I changed the font smallest to largest and I can't get it to look jagged at all.

I took a snapshot of a page, crop a paragraph and zoomed it 240% and it is still smooth (a little blurry in some areas) and not jagged.

[Jack__Flack]

Originally Posted by tyche

Can you take a snapshot and post what you're seeing. I changed the font smallest to largest and I can't get it to look jagged at all.

I took a snapshot of a page, crop a paragraph and zoomed it 240% and it is still smooth (a little blurry in some areas) and not jagged.

I'll try when I get back home. The more I look at the screen in a variety of apps, I think it is the low pixel count combined with nothing like cleartype. I guess it will be one of the tradeoffs for the iPad vs. an eink device.