{"id":8124,"date":"2013-10-29T13:57:45","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T18:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=8124"},"modified":"2015-10-08T14:22:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T18:22:22","slug":"mavericks-font-smoothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/29\/mavericks-font-smoothing\/","title":{"rendered":"Mavericks Font Smoothing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since updating to Mavericks, I&rsquo;ve noticed that text is not rendered as crisply. Here are some screenshots showing Verdana in Safari 7:<\/p>\r\n<div class=\"figures\">\r\n<div class=\"figure\"><p class=\"caption\">Mountain Lion<\/p>\r\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/images\/2013-10-29-daring-fireball-mountain-lion.png\" alt=\"Daring Fireball on Mountain Lion\" \/><br \/>\r\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/images\/2013-10-29-fogbugz-mountain-lion.png\" alt=\"FogBugz on Mountain Lion\" \/><\/div>\r\n<div class=\"figure\"><p class=\"caption\">Mavericks<\/p>\r\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/images\/2013-10-29-daring-fireball-mavericks.png\" alt=\"Daring Fireball on Mavericks\" \/><br \/>\r\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/images\/2013-10-29-fogbugz-mavericks.png\" alt=\"FogBugz on Mavericks\" \/><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p>It feels harder to read, and compared side-by-side the Mavericks text looks like a fuzzy mush to me.<\/p>\r\n<p>Related:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li><p>When using Xcode 5 with a Retina display connected, it <a href=\"http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/19035411\/how-can-i-disable-anti-aliasing-in-xcode-5s-code-view\">does not seem to be possible<\/a> to turn off font-smoothing. This is a shame because (on the adjacent non-Retina display) I find code fonts much easier to read without font smoothing. Not only is reading more pleasant, but I can comfortably use a 3pt smaller font and see more code (and therefore context) on screen at once.<\/p><\/li>\r\n<li><p>Mavericks, like <a href=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/29\/mountain-lion\/\">Mountain Lion<\/a>, seems to ignore the <strong>Use LCD font smoothing when available<\/strong> system preference and always display PDFs using subpixel anti-aliasing:<\/p>\r\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/images\/2013-10-29-preview-2x.png\" alt=\"Preview on Mavericks\" \/>\r\n<p>If I wanted to see colored pixels, I wouldn&rsquo;t have unchecked that box.<\/p>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>Update (2015-03-11): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mikeash\/status\/565588257019543552\">Mike<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mikeash\/status\/565661622702972929\">Ash<\/a> had the same <a href=\"http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/19035411\/disable-xcode-anti-aliasing-text-inside-the-code-editor\/\">problem with Xcode and multiple displays<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mikeash\/status\/565588257019543552\"><p>Fixed Xcode\u2019s antialiasing dumbness. Patch <code>-[NSTextView drawRect:]<\/code>, do <code>[[self layoutManager] setUsesScreenFonts: YES];<\/code>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mikeash\/status\/565661622702972929\"><p>I made a hacked Xcode plugin. There\u2019s an undocumented API for that. I might see about cleaning it up and publishing something.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since updating to Mavericks, I&rsquo;ve noticed that text is not rendered as crisply. Here are some screenshots showing Verdana in Safari 7: Mountain Lion Mavericks It feels harder to read, and compared side-by-side the Mavericks text looks like a fuzzy mush to me. Related: When using Xcode 5 with a Retina display connected, it does [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[104,30,475,102,226],"class_list":["post-8124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-fontsmoothing","tag-mac","tag-mavericks","tag-preview","tag-xcode"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8124"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12467,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124\/revisions\/12467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}