Re: Is font rendering sharper under Wayland?

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Thu, 31 Dec 2020 12:18:27 +0900, Tatsuyuki Ishi wrote:

>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2020 15:26:43 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> Surely antialiasing makes hinting unnecessary.
> 
> It doesn't. "Antialiasing makes hinting unnecessary" is simply wrong
> as a general statement: hinting definitely makes a difference and
> improves clarity at lower scaling factors like 125%. Try comparing a
> 1px stem snapped to pixel grid and another centered on the boundary
> of a pixel; there's no way the latter would look as sharp as the
> former.

That sharpness comes at the expense of distortion. Hinting is all about
hacking the shapes of glyphs to fit the pixel grid -- for example,
getting rid of subtle curves and slants. Anti-aliasing gives you a way
of representing these.