(by the author of Kaleidoscope, Aaron, Greg's Buttons, and Greg's Browser)
e-mail: greg@kaleidoscope.net
WWW: http://www.kaleidoscope.net/greg/
Kagi Online Order Processing Service: http://order.kagi.com/?GL
(You can also register by cash, check, or credit card through mail or e-mail.)
SmoothType vs. Apple's Font Smoothing
SmoothType uses a different anti-aliasing algorithm than Apple uses for their “Smooth all fonts on screen” option in the Appearance control panel, and many people think SmoothType gives better results. I suggest you try
them both to see which you prefer. (If you switch on smoothing in the SmoothType control panel, it overrides the Appearance setting.) For best results with SmoothType, set your monitor resolution as high as it will go, but then increase the font sizes (or magnification) you use so that text on your screen is the same physical size as before.
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 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 why text on a television screen, such as the credits for a TV program, can look so crisp from your couch, even though the 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, particularly when browsing web pages.
How do I use it?
Just drop SmoothType into your Control Panels 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 Control Panels folder, or disable it with your Extensions Manager.
For best results, set your monitor resolution as high as possible—if the image is not sharp at that resolution, all the better, since that helps blur together SmoothType's shades of gray—and use larger fonts. For instance, if you normally use a 10 or 12 point font for your Finder views or your web browser, try switching to 12 or 15 point (with SmoothType, fonts look good at all sizes, not just the standard 12, 14, 18 point sizes). If your word processor lets you set the magnification for your windows, try boosting it to 120% or 125%.
The Control Panel
The SmoothType control panel lets you choose between 4-bit Smoothing and 2-bit Smoothing. The 4-bit smoothing uses 16 intermediate shades to give the highest quality smoothing possible. In contrast, 2-bit smoothing uses only 4 shades, but draws much faster and requires less memory.
If you check the Smooth System Font box, SmoothType smoothes the font used in menus, window titles, dialog boxes, etc. Under System 7, the system font is Chicago 12. If you are using Kaleidoscope or Mac OS 8, you have a choice of system fonts. Since the system font is used so extensively, you are more likely to notice a speed hit from smoothing it, particularly in menus. Also, Chicago 12 looks essentially the same whether smoothed or not, and smoothing it just slows you down. On the other hand, many people think the Mac OS 8 system font Charcoal looks much better when smoothed.
Please note that the system font has nothing to do with the font used in Finder windows and for icon labels on the desktop. That is the Finder views font, not the system font.
Also note that if you are using Aaron, Aaron Light, or Greg's Buttons to substitute a system font, the Smooth System Font option causes the font to revert back to Chicago. Kaleidoscope does not have this problem.
If you check the Smooth Other Fonts box, SmoothType smoothes all fonts other than the system font. This setting takes effect immediately, without requiring a restart. So if you need to turn SmoothType off briefly, just uncheck this box.
The Smooth Text Above popup menu lets you set a size cutoff below which SmoothType will not affect any text. Some people find that SmoothType's blurring makes small text harder to read and would rather use the normal 10 or 12 point bitmaps. Just set the Smooth Text Above popup to the smallest size you want smoothed, or set it to All Sizes if you want all text to be smoothed.
Shareware
SmoothType is shareware; it is NOT free. If you use SmoothType for more than two weeks, you should pay a $10 registration fee. (After two weeks of use, SmoothType will display a shareware reminder each time you restart your Mac.) Registrations are handled by Kagi, a payment processing company. You can register on the web by credit card at the Kagi Online Order Processing site: <http://order.kagi.com/?GL>. Alternatively, you can pay by check, cash, or credit card using the enclosed Register application to create a customized form with you then mail or e-mail to Kagi. Their addresses are given on the form (so if you cannot find Kagi's address, then you must be doing something wrong).
Once Kagi processes your payment, which takes up to a week from when they receive it, they e-mail you a message with subject Thanks for your payment containing instructions to remove the shareware reminder. Sometimes Kagi's e-mail replies do get lost in the mail, so if you do not receive this message, you should contact Kagi at <admin@kagi.com> to ask about the status of your registration.
If you are already a registered user of version 1.x, you can upgrade for $5. To get this reduced price, check the Upgrade from Version 1.x box on the online registration page or in the register application. (Do not use the comments field to request the upgrade. The payments are processed electronically, and the comments are not read until after you have been charged.) If you really do not want to pay the upgrade fee, contact me at <greg@kaleidoscope.net> and I will give you the registration key.
What do I need?
TrueType or PostScript fonts. SmoothType uses these outline fonts to decide which shades of gray to use. If you want SmoothType to anti-alias PostScript Type 1 fonts, you need Adobe Type Manager, and you must force SmoothType to load after ATM. To do this, rename it “~SmoothType”.
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 should also 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 runs on any Mac with a 68020 or better, a 68040 processor is recommended. SmoothType is a Fat control panel optimized for use on both 680x0 and PowerPC machines.
SmoothType is compatible with all system versions from System 7 through Mac OS 9.
Notes
If you use ATM and want SmoothType to anti-alias your PostScript Type 1 fonts, you must force SmoothType to load after ATM. To do this, change its name to “~SmoothType”.
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 Geneva, Monaco, or New York. These fonts were designed as bitmap screen fonts, and they do not look good when anti-aliased.
When you switch system font smoothing on or off, the Apple menu may not update immediately. Mac OS 8 caches the contents of the Apple menu, and there is no easy way to force it to redraw.
If you are using Aaron, Aaron Light, or Greg's Buttons to substitute a system font, the Smooth System Font option causes the font to revert back to Chicago. Kaleidoscope does not have this problem.
Smoothed text does not always look right when highlighted, as it can leave a halo around the characters. This is a limitation of the Mac OS highlighting routines, and there is nothing I can do to fix it. However, the problem is minimized if you use a light highlight color, such as Purple.
Version History
SmoothType 2.1.1 (25 September 1999)
Fixes a problem with blank windows in FWB Hard Disk Toolkit.
Fixes a glitch smoothing the system font when using Kaleidoscope.
Updates my e-mail address. I can now be reached at <greg@kaleidoscope.net>.
SmoothType 2.1 (13 January 1999)
SmoothType is now significantly faster than before.
Fixes a problem in Microsoft Word 98 where the red or green wavy underline (indicating a spelling or grammar error) would disappear or cause the text to become distorted.
Fixes a problem with disappearing text in PageSpinner and other applications using the WASTE text engine.
Other minor fixes.
SmoothType 2.0.2 (30 September 1998)
SmoothType is now fully compatible with Mac OS 8.5, fixing a problem drawing disabled text in menus and elsewhere.
SmoothType works better with Kaleidoscope, fixing an occasional glitch drawing the top item in menus and push button or popup menu titles.
SmoothType 2.0.1 (4 July 1998)
Fixes problems drawing text on patterned backgrounds, particularly in Finder windows with Kaleidoscope 2.0 and certain web pages.
SmoothType 2.0 (1 June 1998)
SmoothType is now a control panel letting you choose between high quality 4-bit and faster 2-bit smoothing, and you can switch smoothing on and off on-the-fly, with separate settings for the system font and other fonts. You can also set a size cutoff so SmoothType will not smooth smaller fonts.
Fixes a problem where SmoothType would stop smoothing in some apps.
SmoothType draws underlined text better.
SmoothType draws text faster, particularly on patterned backgrounds.
Raised the shareware fee to $10. Registered users of SmoothType 1.x can upgrade for $5. If you really do not want to pay the upgrade fee, contact me at <greg@math.harvard.edu> and I will give you the registration key.
SmoothType 1.3.2 (10 October 1997)
SmoothType no longer mistakenly anti-aliases fonts when printing or faxing.
Fixed a problem drawing very tall fonts, such as Mathematica's Math2 fonts.
Fixed a problem drawing inverted text in certain cases, such as in Font Gander.
SmoothType 1.3.1 (5 September 1997)
Changed the file name to “~SmoothType” to force it to load after the Twin Turbo extensions. This fixes text drawing problems with Twin Turbo video cards.
Fixed problems with BBEdit and the Apple System Profiler.
SmoothType 1.3 (7 August 1997)
Under Mac OS 8, it no longer erases white rectangles behind text.
Improved text on patterned backgrounds, such as on web pages.
Merged the 680x0 and PowerPC variants into a single Fat extension.
Added a snazzy new icon.
SmoothType 1.2 (4 May 1997)
SmoothType is now significantly faster and takes up much less RAM.
SmoothType 1.1 (9 September 1996)
SmoothType now anti-aliases any font at sizes where no bitmap is available. In particular, if ATM is running, SmoothType anti-aliases PostScript fonts at all sizes except where there are bitmaps.
ClarisWorks text no longer becomes unreadable. It does occasionally switch to black and white, but at least the text is not garbled like it used to be.
Eudora Pro and Cyberdog text is now always anti-aliased.
Code Warrior text no longer turns into black rectangles in thousands or millions of colors.
Fixed a conflict with the PaperPort Extension that prevented SmoothType from drawing anti-aliased text.
SmoothType no longer attempts to anti-alias non-Roman text.
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.
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.
