Fonts and antialiasing

I use the ClearType Tuning from TweakUI or whatever it is, and it seems like the only font I can't get to antialias is Arial. It drives me insane, it looks so crappy.

With standard font smoothing the font will only smooth at a certain size. If they are too small they will be aliased. This information is stored inside the font itself and can vary.
Does the fonts anti-alias at larger size? Does this only occur in SkinsStudio, or is it system wide?

Bebi Bulba: Your Arial font doesn't anti-alias with ClearType? How bizzare. ClearType should anti-alias all fonts. Can you post a screenie of samples?

I thought it might be something like that .I have the clear type tuner but on a crt,sometimes clear type is more like smear type.
So thats why arial black dosnt antialias small but airstrip 4 does.  
Thanks guys,I was getting crosseyed trying to figure that one.    

I need a small good looking font for buttons and menus...any suggestions?

calibri, you can get it from my warsux skin.

I've have never seen good results from using clear type of a CRT monitor......
Read this.... LINK Especially the part about Display requirements.

I thought that one looked bad unless clear type was on...  
thanks Craig,I will give her a go.

Thanks Randy,that was way more than I already knew...    

I have never seen ClearType have issues on a CRT.

That's because ClearType uses the spesific way that the RGB colours are located in LCD monitor. It uses the R, G and B elements as subpixels. But as CRT monitors are buildt differently they often don't look very well.


The Calibri font is part of the new fonts from MS shipping with Office 2007. They where specificity designed with ClearType in mind. They still work without ClearType though, but loose some of their distinction.

When I was still using Windows 2000 I got hold of a program that allowed me to change how font's anti-aliased. I managed to change the Tahoma and Verdana font to anti-alias at less than 14pt. Needed to do a bit og hackery to change the file as it's a system font. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/664467/

Larabiefonts http://www.larabiefonts.com/ got some good quality free fonts. Not all are suitiable for small screen reading so you might want to browse a little. They also mostly include a very wide range of character.

so would that be a local fix or could you export the font with your WB?

clear type does make some fonts on a crt better(that calibri is one)but most look a little off.
I'm not a total doofus,I knew clear type was mainly for lcd...just didnt know why some fonts didnt antialias at all(when small)  

I'm not sure if it's actually Arial or MS Sans Serif or something else like that, but here's a screenie: click.

looks badly antialiased   

you font sleuth you!!



You know what I use.. Also to avoid any of these issues use a square type font that has no edges that need antialiased.

I know it limits font choices but works perfectly if all u want are uniformly smooth fonts.

yeah John,I found a great one on ...OptimaNova bold SC.  Very readable and looks good at many different point sizes.

Yes, That is MS Sans Serif and will not anti-alias since it's not a TrueType or OpenType font. It's annoying that these legacy fonts are still used these days. I think I found a little hack somewhere which forced Windows to use replacement fonts for these types of fonts. It should be somewhere in my pile of bookmarks. ...which there was a good bookmark manager...

I thought I had changed it in the registry somewhere, but I guess it didn't get everything. Now I can't remember how I did it.

Have you tried post-its?   

Evil post-it notes! Evil! Always telling you to remember to do something... grrr...