MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - PRS-500 Modifying fonts as a fix for display contrast

dstampe · 01-18-2007, 10:06 AM

I've been studying why the e-ink display is so unreadable with the typical fonts (my vision isb't very good in the first place), and I believe one of the biggest issues is that single-pixel black strokes in fonts are very low contrast (more grey than black). Thicker strokes (at least 2 pixels) have much better contrast.
The solution for me (at least for RTF files where font and style manipulation is possible) was to use 16-point Arial in boldface. This creates broad strokes at all sizes with the built-in sans-derif font. Trying this with serif fonts gives rather poor results, as the serif font in the Reader appears to have extremely thin horizontal strokes, and using boldface mostly widens the vertical strokes. Also, converting everything to boldface makes some books hard to read (i.e. where one character's dialog is shown in boldface)
Rather than converting each book I want to read into RTF, reformatting, and importing the RTF file (with the inevitable loss of content at each step), what about changing the reader's default font set to bolder fonts? Something like Bitstream Vera Sans Bold or Bitstream Vera Serif Bold might be a good starting point.
The other reformatting issue that I think most users agree on is that the fonts used in most books are just too small. I'm not an expert in fonts and tools (haven't fooled around with that stuff for about 10 years, an eternity for this field), but I wonder if it is possible to "tweak" the font files themselves so that it is rendered larger than intended by the Reader's current software--for example, change something in the font data so that, for example, the Reader requests 12-point and ends up rendering 16-point instead. (This obviously involves both the font format and font rendering engine).
It might also be possible to modify (hopefully with some tool function rather than glyph by glyph) to increase the stroke width of the fonts to inmprove legibility of the display. Maybe there is a font data header item for weight that will have this effect.
I'm not an expert in fonts (don't really have time to become one at the moment) but I know a number of developers are currently working on multilingual fonts, and so might have the required knowledge (or at least some link to documentation that might help in evaluating this).
Implementing this would be a huge improvement over reformatting each document, converting to graphical form, etc. Any book loaded would automatically be displayed at a more legible size. Perhaps a pre-complied flash image could be developed and posted so that any user could increase font size by re-flashing the Reader.
Downsides migh be that PDF formatting might break, it would have to be tried.
So, does this sound feasible? Can anyone post a link (or enough keywords to Google the information) on the type of fonts used (to research the font format) and how these are interperted by the Reader's software?

01-18-2007, 10:06 AM	#1
dstampe dstampe Posts: 50 Karma: 17 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Canada Device: Sony PRS-500	Modifying fonts as a fix for display contrast I've been studying why the e-ink display is so unreadable with the typical fonts (my vision isb't very good in the first place), and I believe one of the biggest issues is that single-pixel black strokes in fonts are very low contrast (more grey than black). Thicker strokes (at least 2 pixels) have much better contrast. The solution for me (at least for RTF files where font and style manipulation is possible) was to use 16-point Arial in boldface. This creates broad strokes at all sizes with the built-in sans-derif font. Trying this with serif fonts gives rather poor results, as the serif font in the Reader appears to have extremely thin horizontal strokes, and using boldface mostly widens the vertical strokes. Also, converting everything to boldface makes some books hard to read (i.e. where one character's dialog is shown in boldface) Rather than converting each book I want to read into RTF, reformatting, and importing the RTF file (with the inevitable loss of content at each step), what about changing the reader's default font set to bolder fonts? Something like Bitstream Vera Sans Bold or Bitstream Vera Serif Bold might be a good starting point. The other reformatting issue that I think most users agree on is that the fonts used in most books are just too small. I'm not an expert in fonts and tools (haven't fooled around with that stuff for about 10 years, an eternity for this field), but I wonder if it is possible to "tweak" the font files themselves so that it is rendered larger than intended by the Reader's current software--for example, change something in the font data so that, for example, the Reader requests 12-point and ends up rendering 16-point instead. (This obviously involves both the font format and font rendering engine). It might also be possible to modify (hopefully with some tool function rather than glyph by glyph) to increase the stroke width of the fonts to inmprove legibility of the display. Maybe there is a font data header item for weight that will have this effect. I'm not an expert in fonts (don't really have time to become one at the moment) but I know a number of developers are currently working on multilingual fonts, and so might have the required knowledge (or at least some link to documentation that might help in evaluating this). Implementing this would be a huge improvement over reformatting each document, converting to graphical form, etc. Any book loaded would automatically be displayed at a more legible size. Perhaps a pre-complied flash image could be developed and posted so that any user could increase font size by re-flashing the Reader. Downsides migh be that PDF formatting might break, it would have to be tried. So, does this sound feasible? Can anyone post a link (or enough keywords to Google the information) on the type of fonts used (to research the font format) and how these are interperted by the Reader's software?