@Daniel Beardsmore said:
@asuffield said:Correct alignment: all letters shall line up precisely in the horizontal axis. See the RISCOS screenshot for an example of this being done wrong.
Maybe I am wrong here, but I would interpret "horizontal axis" as "x axis", i.e. the baseline. Looking at the RISC OS image, all the letters are sitting on the baseline level with each other. Some of the anti-aliasing does suggest that they're not but I don't quite know why.
Rather than the anti-aliased font, the horizontal-axis comment may have been referring to the pixelated font in the "window" title... the lower-case "p," for example, that floats above the baseline, the sagging"f" crossbar, etc. These kinds of non-standard lower case letters were of course very common in the ancient days of displays with fixed-matrix characters. Ever seen a lower-case "g" in 5x7?
@Daniel Beardsmore said:
@asuffield said:There should not be blurry grey edges to characters, making them look out of focus.
This one is a real toughie. Larger text sizes (e.g. headings) look pretty bad without anti-aliasing, where the jaggies start to show up too much. But anti-aliasing tends to either distort the letters, or cause blur. Even dye sublimation–printed beige text at 300 dpi needs anti-aliasing else jaggies show up; you need at least 600 dpi before you can have 1-bit smooth text. That said, at 300 dpi any anti-aliasing should not be too blurry. At 100 dpi, you're a bit hosed. We're just extra aware of the limitations of present technology – pick your poison really.
(And yes, I do puzzle over Photoshop's different anti-aliasing settings, although they do differ. The real question is what dpi and font size combination they're intended for...)
I am of the opinion that fonts of any size look bad without anti-aliasing... but that's just me.