I have always thought that "Cleartype" made things worse, unconditionally,
on both CRT and LCD displays (and in the case of LCD displays, both digital
and analog). When I build systems, I always show the customer the display
with cleartype on and cleartype off and let them select ... no one has EVER
selected cleartype on. Cleartype adds "gray" pixels in the edges of
characters that are simply not present in the actual font design. For the
life of me, I can't figure out why anyone would ever want it. I turn all
font "smoothing" off on my own systems.
If you have an analog LCD display, you may not have the dot clock
frequency and or phase adjusted correctly. If Vista and it's drivers are
using different refresh frequencies or resolutions than XP, this could
cause and apparent "fuzzy" problem.
Here is my writeup on adjusting the dot clock frequency and phase on an
analog LCD display:
To properly adjust the dot clock frequency and phase of an analog LCD
monitor, download this test program:
www.winsite.com/bin/Info?500000030936
or (same site)
http://ns.winsite.net/bin/Info?500000030936
This program is variously known as CRTAT, CRTAT2, and CRT Align
(crtalign), and was written by Stephen Jenkins in about 1992 or 1993. This
is a very old Windows 3.1 program written in visual basic. It runs under
XP just fine, absolutely perfectly in fact, even with today's high
resolution monitors (you do need VBRUN300.DLL (the Visual basic version 3
runtime DLL library), which it may or may not come with the program
depending on where you download it from, but if you don't have
VBRUN300.DLL, it can be easily found on the web).
This program is totally non-invasive, it's "installation" makes NO changes
to your registry or to ANY system components or files. In fact, if you
just unzip the program and double click the exe file, it will run fine
without actual "installation" (but the program and the help file need to
be in the same directory, and VBRUN300.DLL needs to be available in
\Windows\System).
To use the program for this purpose, after installation, select the
leftmost of the 3 functions in the "Test" group (or "resolution" in the
drop-down menu) and then check both "mode" check-boxes.
When you display this pattern, you should see an absolutely perfect and
uniform field of alternating (but very, very fine) black and white
vertical bars. Each bar is only one single pixel wide. If you see
"moire" distortion, or smearing, your display isn't adjusted correctly.
Digital monitors (with DVI interfaces) will always be "perfect". Analog
monitors will usually show an initial moire distortion pattern until they
are adjusted (dot clock frequency and phase). In most cases, perfect
adjustment can be achieved (and is "remembered" by the display), but in
some cases you can't achieve this. Note that the "auto" (auto-adjust)
function on almost all analog LCD monitors gets "close" but usually does
not get to a perfect or even the best possible adjustment.
[On many monitors, the dot clock frequency is called Horizontal size or
width. Phase is usually called Phase]
If you have an analog monitor and you don't use this program to adjust
your monitor, you are doing yourself a real disservice.
Two other comments:
First, you MUST run the video card only a the native pixel resolution of
the LCD panel. NO EXCEPTIONS OF ANY KIND ON THIS POINT, PERIOD.
Second, poor quality video cables are a huge issue with analog LCD
monitors. MOST of the analog cables offered for sale, as well as those
that come with many low-cost monitors, are "poor quality". You can almost
tell the quality by the thickness of the cable. You want something
significantly larger than a number 2 pencil .... maybe even approaching
the size of a garden hose (there are 5 individual coax cables inside a
good analog video cable, and the larger their individual diameters, the
lower their loss and capacitance). Unfortunately, really good video
cables are both hard to find and expensive.
Ed said:
I'm using build 5744 of RC2 and there is still the nagging problem of
fonts appearing blurry, indistinct, muddy -- you choose the adjective.
The point is that ClearType in Vista isn't as good as ClearType in XP.
Using Standard font smoothing only results in a jagged headache.
Anyone know how I can use Vista and regain the font quality of XP? The
font is gorgeous in the menus and titlebar, but when it comes to
heavy-duty text users, the current (albeit unfinished) version of Vista
looks like a toy. (Which I know it isn't.)
Thanks.
