{"id":8228,"date":"2013-11-22T08:25:11","date_gmt":"2013-11-22T13:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=8228"},"modified":"2015-10-08T14:20:39","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T18:20:39","slug":"layer-backed-text-rendering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/22\/layer-backed-text-rendering\/","title":{"rendered":"Layer-backed Text Rendering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/29\/mavericks-font-smoothing\/\">Mavericks Font Smoothing<\/a>, I noted that there has been a regression in the quality of text rendering in Safari (and some other apps). I thought this was due to a change in Mavericks. However, I noticed a similar change when updating from <a href=\"http:\/\/tapbots.com\/software\/tweetbot\/mac\/\">Tweetbot<\/a> 1.3.3 to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2013\/11\/20\/tweetbot-for-mac-updated-with-scrolling-improvements-replies-from-notifications\/\">Tweetbot 1.4<\/a>, with both versions running on Mavericks:<\/p>\r\n<div class=\"figures\">\r\n<div class=\"figure\"><p class=\"caption\">Tweetbot 1.3.3<\/p>\r\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/images\/2013-11-21-tweetbot-1.3.3.png\" alt=\"Tweetbot 1.3.3\" \/><\/div>\r\n<div class=\"figure\"><p class=\"caption\">Tweetbot 1.4<\/p>\r\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/images\/2013-11-21-tweetbot-1.4.png\" alt=\"Tweetbot 1.4\" \/><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/basilshkara\/status\/403285441597562881\">Basil Shkara<\/a>, developer of the new <a href=\"http:\/\/neat.io\/bee\/\">Bee<\/a> Mac client for FogBugz, thinks this is due to Tweetbot using layer-backed views. This sounds like a likely explanation. Text rendering has always worked differently in Core Animation layers, for example with <a href=\"http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/7047710\/bad-text-rendering-with-core-animation\">subpixel anti-aliasing<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/earthlingsoft.net\/ssp\/blog\/2007\/11\/subpixel_antialiasing_followup\">not being supported<\/a>. It&rsquo;s not clear to me why regular anti-aliasing has to use a different algorithm, though. In any event, I would happy to trade animations and super-fast scrolling in order to get better text rendering back.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Mavericks Font Smoothing, I noted that there has been a regression in the quality of text rendering in Safari (and some other apps). I thought this was due to a change in Mavericks. However, I noticed a similar change when updating from Tweetbot 1.3.3 to Tweetbot 1.4, with both versions running on Mavericks: Tweetbot [&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":[689,104,30,32,475,181],"class_list":["post-8228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-core-animation","tag-fontsmoothing","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-mavericks","tag-tweetbot"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8228","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=8228"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12464,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8228\/revisions\/12464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}