ClearType

1997

Dick Brass, a Vice President at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004, complained that the company was slow in moving ClearType to market in the portable computing field. ==How ClearType works== Normally, the software in a computer treats the computer’s display screen as a rectangular array of square, indivisible pixels, each of which has an intensity and color that are determined by the blending of three primary colors: red, green, and blue.

1998

This trade-off is asserted to work well on LCD flat panel monitors. ClearType was first announced at the November 1998 COMDEX exhibition.

2000

The technology was first introduced in software in January 2000 as an always-on feature of Microsoft Reader, which was released to the public in August 2000. ClearType was significantly changed with the introduction of DirectWrite in Windows 7. ==Background== Computer displays where the positions of individual pixels are permanently fixed such as most modern flat panel displays can show saw-tooth edges when displaying small, high-contrast graphic elements, such as text.

2001

This and the previous example with the orange circle demonstrate the blurring introduced. ===Empirical studies=== A 2001 study, conducted by researchers from Clemson University and The University of Pennsylvania on "18 users who spent 60 minutes reading fiction from each of three different displays" found that "When reading from an LCD display, users preferred text rendered with ClearType™.

2002

ClearType also yielded higher readability judgments and lower ratings of mental fatigue." A 2002 study on 24 users conducted by the same researchers from Clemson University also found that "Participants were significantly more accurate at identifying words with ClearType™ than without ClearType™." According to a 2006 study, at the University of Texas at Austin by Dillon et al., ClearType "may not be universally beneficial".

2004

Dick Brass, a Vice President at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004, complained that the company was slow in moving ClearType to market in the portable computing field. ==How ClearType works== Normally, the software in a computer treats the computer’s display screen as a rectangular array of square, indivisible pixels, each of which has an intensity and color that are determined by the blending of three primary colors: red, green, and blue.

In a 2004 study, for instance, Lee Gugerty, a psychology professor at Clemson University, in South Carolina, measured a 17 percent improvement in word recognition accuracy with ClearType.

2006

ClearType also yielded higher readability judgments and lower ratings of mental fatigue." A 2002 study on 24 users conducted by the same researchers from Clemson University also found that "Participants were significantly more accurate at identifying words with ClearType™ than without ClearType™." According to a 2006 study, at the University of Texas at Austin by Dillon et al., ClearType "may not be universally beneficial".

2007

Similarly, in a study published in 2007, psychologist Andrew Dillon at the University of Texas at Austin found that when subjects were asked to scan a spreadsheet and pick out certain information, they did those tasks 7 percent faster with ClearType." ==Display requirements== ClearType and allied technologies require display hardware with fixed pixels and subpixels.

2008

The font rendering engine in DirectWrite supports a different version of ClearType with only greyscale anti-aliasing, not color subpixel rendering, as demonstrated at PDC 2008.

“Prediction of preferred Cleartype filters using the S-CIELAB metric”, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, October 2008.ClearType Steven Sinofsky (23 June 2009) Engineering Changes to ClearType in Windows 7 Windows components Digital typography Computer graphics algorithms

2009

“Prediction of preferred Cleartype filters using the S-CIELAB metric”, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, October 2008.ClearType Steven Sinofsky (23 June 2009) Engineering Changes to ClearType in Windows 7 Windows components Digital typography Computer graphics algorithms

2013

The improvements have been confirmed by independent sources, such as Firefox developers; they were particularly noticeable for OpenType fonts in Compact Font Format (CFF). Many Office 2013 apps including Word 2013, Excel 2013, parts of Outlook 2013 stopped using ClearType and switched to this DirectWrite greyscale antialiasing.

Meanwhile, Word 2013 enjoys cool animations and smooth zooming.




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