MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Troubleshooting Kindle font rendering inferior than Sony?

NiLuJe · 09-04-2010, 08:41 PM

@budalb: I wouldn't say that. I would say that ADE is probably tailored to PS outlines, being Adobe's baby, while the Kindle's renderer (the specific FreeType settings used, at least on fw 2.x) is favoring TT outlines while disregarding any bytecode TT hinting, which works pretty well for most of the fonts, except at very small sizes. Although, on an e-Ink screen, these settings tend to be very unforgiving for thin full Serif fonts, yeah. (I don't care much for full Serif fonts, whatever the rendering engine, so I may be a little bit biased here ^^)

If you feed crappy TTF conversion of Type1/2 fonts to the Kindle, they'll look like crap. Even more so if FT's autohinter handles them badly.

But I'm pretty sure that, in this specific case, it's only a matter of finding a proper TTF conversion of that font, or doing it ourselves. Unfortunately, it's copyrighted, so we can't really do that

.

Or we could also try feeding the Kindle a PS font disguised as a .ttf, since FreeType handles PS fonts perfectly. (never tried that, though).

Anyway, we can't judge any of the renderer based on one flimsy test like that, when we're not sure exactly what type of font was used in each case

.

Granted, I'm heavily biased towards FreeType, because, IMHO, appart maybe from Adobe's SPR renderer used in Acrobat, it's miles away in terms of readabilty from both Apple & Microsoft renderers

.

@jswinden: It's actually Century Schoolbook BT, and, AFAICT, there's no light variant. (Or if there is, it's bundled Opentype-style in the Roman font).

09-04-2010, 08:41 PM	#9
NiLuJe BLAM! Posts: 13,506 Karma: 26047202 Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Paris, France Device: Kindle 2i, 3g, 4, 5w, PW, PW2, PW5; Kobo H2O, Forma, Elipsa, Sage, C2E	@budalb: I wouldn't say that. I would say that ADE is probably tailored to PS outlines, being Adobe's baby, while the Kindle's renderer (the specific FreeType settings used, at least on fw 2.x) is favoring TT outlines while disregarding any bytecode TT hinting, which works pretty well for most of the fonts, except at very small sizes. Although, on an e-Ink screen, these settings tend to be very unforgiving for thin full Serif fonts, yeah. (I don't care much for full Serif fonts, whatever the rendering engine, so I may be a little bit biased here ^^) If you feed crappy TTF conversion of Type1/2 fonts to the Kindle, they'll look like crap. Even more so if FT's autohinter handles them badly. But I'm pretty sure that, in this specific case, it's only a matter of finding a proper TTF conversion of that font, or doing it ourselves. Unfortunately, it's copyrighted, so we can't really do that . Or we could also try feeding the Kindle a PS font disguised as a .ttf, since FreeType handles PS fonts perfectly. (never tried that, though). Anyway, we can't judge any of the renderer based on one flimsy test like that, when we're not sure exactly what type of font was used in each case . Granted, I'm heavily biased towards FreeType, because, IMHO, appart maybe from Adobe's SPR renderer used in Acrobat, it's miles away in terms of readabilty from both Apple & Microsoft renderers . @jswinden: It's actually Century Schoolbook BT, and, AFAICT, there's no light variant. (Or if there is, it's bundled Opentype-style in the Roman font). Last edited by NiLuJe; 09-04-2010 at 08:54 PM.