(by the author of Greg's Buttons, Greg's Browser, and Aaron)
e-mail
greg@math.harvard.edu
WWW
http://greg.math.harvard.edu/
What is it?
SmoothType makes your screen look more like the printed page. Using a technique called anti-aliasing, SmoothType blurs the jagged edges of bitmap fonts with shades of gray, effectively doubling your screen resolution. This is the similar to the technique used by some laser printers of varying the size of the dots to improve the printed image quality. This is also the reason why a television picture can look so crisp even though the TV resolution is really quite low.
With SmoothType, your fonts look on the screen just like they will when you print them, so you no longer need to look at large point sizes to get an idea of what the font really looks like. The effect can be quite striking. When I view a StreetSmart on screen display (in Helvetica or Helvetica Narrow), it looks just like my monthly statement. With Netscape, the Apple web site (with the font set to Garamond) looks exactly like their ads, manuals, and other literature.
How do I use it?
Just drop the SmoothType extension into your Extensions folder (or alternatively, drop it onto your System Folder and let the Finder put it where it belongs) and restart your Mac. To disable SmoothType, just drag it back out of your Extensions folder, or disable it with your Extensions Manager.
If you have a Power Mac, you should use the “SmoothType PPC” extension. This version is optimized for the PowerPC processor, and it is significantly faster.
Shareware
SmoothType is shareware. If you use it, please pay the $5 registration fee. Registrations are handled by the Kagi Shareware service run by Kee Nethery. Please note that Kagi is NOT a software publisher; they just process registrations. In addition to cash in various currencies and checks drawn on US banks, Kagi also accepts credit cards by snail-mail or e-mail (your card number is scrambled). For organizations, they handle invoices and site licenses, too. For more information, run the “Register” program, which creates a customized registration form for you. Once you have filled out all the necessary information, you can copy the form to paste into an e-mail message, print the form to mail it, or save it as a SimpleText document to print later. The Kagi Shareware e-mail and snail-mail addresses are given on the registration form created by the “Register” program. You must use this form, or as close a facsimile as possible, when registering since Kagi handles payments for several dozen authors using a highly automated system.
Once you register, Kagi will send you an e-mail reply acknowledging your payment. There is also an option for a Postcard Receipt (which adds $1 to your total) if you do not have e-mail or want a hard copy. Power Windows does not have an Annoying Shareware Message™ to disable, features to unlock, or any other form of shareware incentive. I believe in the honor system.
Please note that I do not send out new versions to registered users or keep a mailing list to announce upgrades. However, I do plan to create new and improved versions, and I try to make sure that each release is distributed as widely as possible.
What do I need?
TrueType or PostScript fonts. If you want SmoothType to anti-alias PostScript fonts, you need Adobe Type Manager as well. SmoothType uses these outline fonts to decide which shades of gray to use. If you have a bitmap font without a TrueType or PostScript version, SmoothType will not affect it.
A high resolution color monitor. SmoothType needs at least 16 grays or 256 colors, and it works best with thousands of colors or more. You also need to set your monitor to a resolution of 80 dpi or higher. The greater the resolution, the less your eyes can pick out the individual gray pixels, and the better it looks. In fact, SmoothType works best at resolutions where normal text becomes unreadable.
A fast Mac or Power Mac. Anti-aliasing is processor intensive, so it requires a powerful machine. Although it will run on any Mac with a 68020 or better, a 68040 processor is recommended. Also, if you have a Power Mac, make sure to use the “SmoothType PPC” version to take advantage of the speed of your PowerPC processor.
Optimal Setup
I am currently using SmoothType on a Power Mac 7600/120, and I am very happy with its performance. I tried using previous versions on a Power Mac 6100/66, but it was too slow for me. On the other hand, I originally wrote it on a PowerBook Duo 210, and several of my beta testers are using it on 68030 machines, so your mileage may vary. SmoothType is optimized for the PowerPC 604 processor, and personally I would not want to use it on anything slower.
My monitor is an AppleVision 1710, and I have it set to the 1280x960 resolution. This is over 100 dpi, and although normal text is unreadable, anti-aliased text looks fantastic. Since SmoothType effectively doubles the resolution, I am getting over 200 dpi on my screen, which is comparable to a low end laser printer. I think SmoothType looks good down to the 1024x768 (84 dpi) resolution, but at anything lower the gray pixels become distracting and make the text harder to read.
I use 16, 18, or 24 point text for everything on my screen, from the Finder Views font to text in word processors and spreadsheets. At my high monitor resolution, these point sizes are the same physical size as 10, 12, and 16 point fonts on a standard 72 dpi monitor. Many applications have a feature that lets you blow up or reduce the size of the displayed image. In those cases, I use normal point sizes but blow up the image by 150%. This gives me true WYSIWYG—not only is text the same size as on the printed page, but it also looks almost as good on the screen.
Notes
Not all applications take advantage of SmoothType. Some applications do their drawing in black and white offscreen bitmaps so that they can draw a whole screenful instantaneously. Unfortunately, if they draw their text in black and white, SmoothType cannot add the intermediate shades of gray.
SmoothType does not anti-alias Chicago, Geneva, or Monaco. These fonts were designed as bitmap screen fonts, and they do not look good when anti-aliased. Also, since these fonts are used so frequently throughout the system, anti-aliasing them could significantly slow down your Mac.
To compare the plain and anti-aliased versions of fonts, use the Monitors control panel to switch to Black & White and back.
Eudora Pro 3.0 switches between plain and anti-aliased text in its editing window as you type in a message. This is a bit distracting at first, but I do not really consider it a problem. There is nothing I can do to fix the problem, other than excluding SmoothType from that window altogether.
Version History
SmoothType 1.0.1 (15 July 1996)
No longer attempts to anti-alias the New York font. New York was designed as a bitmap font and does not anti-alias very well. It also caused some problems with America Online.
SmoothType 1.0 (19 June 1996)
First shareware release. Improved the appearance of color text and removed the restrictions for 256 color monitors. Text is anti-aliased in more applications, and the problem with the HP DeskWriter (and possibly other QuickDraw based) printers should be fixed.
Greg's Hack 1.0 (3 September 1995)
On a 256 color screen, colored or inverted text is no longer anti-aliased. There are not enough shades in the 256 color palette to anti-alias colored text, and the inverse routines do not work well with the color table. For best results, use at least thousands of colors or 256 grays.
Anti-aliased font spacing now matches normal font spacing. This slows things down a little, but it fixes the confusion over the cursor location when editing text.
Greg's Hack no longer chops off the top few pixels of tall fonts.
MacHack '95 (24 June 1995)
Greg's Hack originated as an entry in the MacHack '95 hack contest. As its name implies, it was a quick hack developed in a few days, not a finished product. Source code for this version is available.
d e v e l o p
The anti-aliasing code is based on articles in Develop issues 7 and 10. The first article explained how to draw the font four times the regular size in an offscreen bitmap and then ditherCopy it down to size. The second article optimized the ditherCopy part.
