Talk:ClearType

message: If someone wants to add a "Criticism of ClearType" section, here's some sources:
*  ClearType and Segoe UI - Why does Microsoft hate us?
* Joel on Software: ClearType - do you use it?
* Barry Schwartz: I hate ClearType
* Predominantly negative user comments on the Microsoft Windows 7 blog and IE7 blog and Visual Studio blog
The basic complaints:
* People with sensitive eyes can see the color fringes, and find it really annoying
* Screenshots taken with ClearType look bad when resized, rotated, or viewed on a different monitor
* ClearType doesn't work well with colored text, analog monitors, or LCD monitors that rotate
* It's difficult to disable ClearType because of scattered control panels for IE, WPF, Windows themes, etc.
* The default fonts for Vista/Win7 are designed in a way that looks blurry unless ClearType is enabled
Some informal polls showing a substantial minority who dislike ClearType:
* http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=837565
* http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/136059-cleartype-do-you-like-it/
* http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=58006
If anyone can find a rigorous study, that would be really useful.  Microsoft touts various research "proving" the benefits of ClearType, but these studies always compare against old style Black&White fonts, never against standard (i.e. grayscale) font smoothing.
24.22.244.85 (talk) 12:32, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, grayscale is antialiasing, just a different kind of antialiasing. Thomas Phinney (talk) 01:33, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism of ClearType

message: I was disappointed to see no mention at all of font hinting. Sub pixel rendering is only half of the approach of ClearType. ClearType also forces fonts into the pixel grid judiciously, affecting the fidelity of the rendered font. Operating systems like Ubuntu & OS X use sub pixel rendering too, but reproduce fonts far more accurately because of a different approach to hinting information. Regardless of which one anyone prefers it is a very important and very significant difference in ClearType and I think it's essential that such a fundamental point be mentioned in the article. I've quickly added some details.
MatthewFP (talk) 00:19, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Font Hinting

message: I've taken the liberty of largely rewriting this article and adding two new illustrations.  Since the article on subpixel rendering goes into the detail on theory and math behind this technology, I modified this article to provide a description more suitable for non-specialists, such as ordinary computer users curious about ClearType and how it works.  The article now points explicitly to the Subpixel rendering article for readers who want all the details on how the technology works internally.
The additional illustrations show close-ups of ClearType effects.  They are not photographs, but simulations based on the screen captures that were in the previous version of the article (and are still there, merged with the new ones).
:— Agateller 12:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewrite

message: I agree with last comment. Whilst Wiki should describe that Cleartype is Microsofts trademarked term for subpixel rendering, the actual explanation and definition of subpixel rendering does not belong here.  Wiki doesnt seem to do this for other trademarks e.g. the page for "Pepsi" doesnt tell you how Cola is made, so why this time?
I also agree with the above comment.  This page's contents should be under subpixel rendering. 18:48, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: While I can agree, I don't agree that "this page's contents should be there". Some of it may better belong there though. -- Northgrove 21:42, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  page 

message: Using a table to illustrate the pixel pattern is inappropriate, since different browsers can display it in different ways.  Can someone make a PNG graphic, or make a close-up photo of a display?  —Michael Z. 2005-08-4 17:15 Z
: I think a close-up of a display is a little too much, and no camera is probably able to do such a close-up. I uploaded a schematic picture, though. - Sikon 03:30, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good work.  Thanks.  [late reply; just saw this] —Michael Z. 2005-10-26 04:56 Z
Current bottom right illustration looks incorrect.  The image doesn't contain any colours.  Just grey smoothing.--CrazyGoldy 05:58, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Illustration 

message: How does the underlying software know which of the three subpixel colors should be used to render on the subpixel layer. This article assumes that subpixel are in the left-to-right order "RGB".
In the above example, the subpixel left to a character is blue, while the subpixel right to a character is red.
What if, say, the order was "BGR" - red and blue are interchanged, therefore subpixel rendering could be wrong, leading to a rather blurry font character. Either the monitor driver tells the operating system the correct subpixel order or a industry wide standard regarding subpixel order exists. --Abdull 23:00, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subpixel order 

message: The following remark appears in the main article, under "Display requirements":
displays that have no fixed pixel positions, such as CRT displays, are incompatible with ClearType
OK, this is totally wrong. Cleartype does work on CRTs. By "work" I mean "has visible effect". While it may not do exactly what it ideally should do on LCD displays, text does look completely different - it is smoother and wider. Now, some people like this effect, others don't (claim that it looks blurry), but it is there. Exact appearance may also vary between displays, which could explain the different opinions on it.
Following are two links showing the same screenshot, taken once with "standard" smoothing and once with "cleartype". Compare it on a CRT of your choice. Screenshots were taken personally by me, so there are no copyright issues.
Standard
Cleartype
:I agree; ClearType on my CRT looks great, and clearly as good as on an LCD. It's among the first things I turn on on a new Windows install myself. I don't really understand why it looks so good (at least as good as regular greyscale antialiasing), but it does. -- Northgrove 21:40, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think you are confusing Cleartype with ordinary text anti-aliasing.  Cleartype includes anti-aliasing, but on a CRT, the text would look best with anti-aliasing (Grey pixels) but not Cleartype (Color fringes).  BTW, those frame grabs come from your graphics memory, so they show that Cleartype is on, but don't show what effect it has on your monitor.  Algr 06:01, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Cleartype is a set of algorithms for both subpixel rendering and anti-aliasing.  When used on LCDs it combines both technologies, and when used on CRTS it uses only the latter; but even in the latter case Cleartpe it is still a specific, non-generic implementation of anti-aliasing, so it is definitely meaningful to talk about Cleartype on CRT screens.  Simxp 16:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I point you to the comment right above yours. -- simxp (talk) 18:35, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

text: As far as I've been able to find on MSDN, there's no greyscale anti-aliasing features in cleartype, so it can't work as intended on a CRT.  With some settings it might give an antialiasing effect that will still be preferable to some users, but it's definitely objectively worse than you would get with greyscale antialiasing.  You simply can't subpixel render without adressable subpixels.  The citation to Microsoft's explanation of use on CRTS does not say anything about CRT types and the info about aperature grille CRTs in this article is incorrect.  Though aperature grill CRTs have phosphor stripes similar to the pixel layout of an LCD, they're not individually adressable, so will give detatched fringes exactly as in a normal shadow mask. Nwimpney (talk) 07:47, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleartype and CRT Displays

message: I'm surprised to read that this is a Microsoft technology.  Cleartype (or some tech doing the same thing) is ubiquitous on all Macintoshes, but most windows programs still lack even basic anti-aliasing. Why is MS behind on something they invented?  Do windows users all have to know to turn the thing on?  Algr 06:05, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ClearType is off by default in Windows XP.  This is because the vast majority of displays that were being sold and used at the time of its release (five years ago) were CRTs.  There are still a very large number of CRTs out there, but the transition to LCDs and portable computers has been ongoing for a couple of years, so in the future (ie. Windows Vista) ClearType will be enabled by default.  Warrens 16:20, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Please don't confuse ClearType and sub-pixel rendering.  Sub-pixel rendering has been around for a long long time and was not invented by Microsoft. ClearType is just Microsoft's implementation of sub-pixel rendering. AlistairMcMillan 19:34, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  But sub-pixel rendering (I called it anti-aliasing.) is always a large improvement on any monitor - especially TV sets.  (It's only bad for print, and it is rare to directly print screen data.) It's only ClearType that is exclusive to LCDs because on a tube, you can't know where any given pixel is relative to the color stripes. Algr 02:28, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  You say "sub-pixel rendering (I called it anti-aliasing.)" -- but sub-pixel rendering and anti-aliasing are two completely different technologies.  Anti-aliasing works on all types of monitor; sub-pixel font rendering only works on LCDs.  Cleartype is *both* -- when turned on on LCDs it combined sub-pixel font rendering with anti-aliasing; when turned on on CRTs it uses only anti-aliasing.  Simxp 16:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Algr -- The subpixel rendering & anti-aliasing implementation on Mac OS is a very different implementation to Cleartype.  Mac OS discards all hinting information, in stark contrast to Cleartype which was built to take as much advantage of hinting as possible.  In my opinion, Cleartype's method provides superior legibility for small font sizes, but of course, opinions vary; this guy has some high-res comparison photos a few screens down, have a look and decide for yourself. Simxp 16:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  ClearType on Macs 

message: Hmm... The "How ClearType works" section starts out OK, but the business about ClearType only working with lines less than one pixel wide is wrong, and the "Wikipedia" enlargement is misleading (as discussed above). I'll rework this section when I get a chance to do it justice, unless someone else gets to it first. --Michael Geary 09:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I think it's a good idea to show the "Wikipedia" enlargement for two reasons: I can see the color fringing on some letters at certain sizes, and it helps the reader understand how the technology works. --Crashie 15:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think it might actually be useful to include an image made from smoothly-enlarged, offset and overlapped copies of each colour channel, along with the "this is what's in the video memory" and "this is how your screen would look if you turned the brightness down by about 50% and aimed a 40x magnification microscope at it" ones, to demonstrate how your brain actually perceives what comes out of the LCD. Which would ultimately be a mostly B/W letter, with triple the resolution of an unsmoothed or full-pixel antialiased one (which could be put alongside, having received the same treatment, to demo how some of the same effects are inherent to all text on an LCD), and some fringing that's actually considerably thinner, softer edged, and far less saturated even compared to what's in the nearest-neighbor, merged-subpixels example. If I can whip something up in Gimp I'll try uploading it to imgur or something, but I've never really had any luck posting images to Wikipedia, especially as it would essentially class as OR. 193.63.174.254 (talk) 17:13, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  How ClearType works 

message: Is it worthwhile mentioning the online tuner by Microsoft?Sclozza 02:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tuner 

message: The see also section of this article has a reference to Apple typography. However, the referenced article deals with the fonts and typography of the various incarnations of the Apple logo, and the fonts on the original Macintosh. 
Shouldn't we really be linking to Fonts on the Mac? 
Arun Philip 14:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apple Typography in See Also? 

message: I removed the image :Image:ClearTypePixels2.jpg in the 'Illustrated comparison' section on the right because it is misleading.. 
It shows antialiased text as a 'simulated' version of cleartype. First of all, it should have make clear in the
caption that it was a simulation, and not actual cleartype (it only said so in the text). But anyway, it is a useless and even
misleading image since the point of cleartype is the improvement over antialiasing, which the image misses completely.
I also moved the other image in that section. BlankAxolotl 04:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  removed image 

message: I f.ex. seems to see more colors than "normal" people does. So when I Upgraded to Office 2007 (cleartype) and opened my outlook, I couldn't read my emails - everything seems very very blurred and moving around..strange - but calling number of my co-workers to read it, they told me it looked exceptionaly sharp and very readable - this seems to make cleartype more of a problem for some people —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 194.144.69.161 (talk) 21:12, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I find cleartype almost unreadable as it is all blurred and out of focus to my eyes. I know for a fact I have certain sensitivities to particular colours, it is why my glasses all come with a red tint to compensate, otherwise natural light causes me pain. I'm guessing people whose eyes lean more towards a certain end of the spectrum will be more likely to experience "foggytype". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.39.188.60 (talk) 02:04, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I do have the same problem as you guys and call it blurtype since that's the effect it has for me. The changes in Office 2007 just about made me crazy until I figured out how to turn it off, AND switch to a more legible font to boot. I'm not sure it's sensitivity to certain colors that's the problem, but what I do know is that it's particularly bad on smaller fonts. Larger ones are readable but still noticeable - in the article itself the lower text in the blown up "exerc" picture looks way blurrier than the upper one, even though the lines are smoother. I also see some mild color fringing if I have cleartype turned on (and before anyone asks, I have set the correct pixel matrix.) Anyone have any idea as to what to add/change to the main article to reflect this? 85.166.251.158 00:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Here's a simple explanation of the phenomenon:  Imagine a white vertical line that is 1/3 pixel wide, on a black background.  On a normal antialiased display, this line would be 1 pixel wide but 33% gray (because it's thinner than a pixel).  But on a ClearType display, it would be 1/3 pixel wide (i.e. 1 subpixel), but a random color, e.g. entirely red (or green, or blue).  Let's add a 2/3 pixel wide vertical line to this hypothetical scene -- it's color will be yellow (i.e. red+green), or cyan (green+blue) or magenta (red+blue).  So instead of varying shades of grey lines, what you've got is obvious color errors.  ClearType "works" because typical fonts aren't made from perfectly vertical lines, but instead squiggly curves whose errors will be much more noisy.  But "noisy errors" isn't the same as "no errors" -- people who can see small details see small errors everywhere.  My question is why an incremental improvement in horizontal-only resolution is sooo important that Microsoft is willing to sacrifice color fidelity, screw up people's ability to take screenshots, break support for swiveling monitors, etc.  Why?  Who asked for this feature?  Loqui (talk) 19:30, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice explanation, except that it's wrong.  Pure, unfiltered subpixel rendering would indeed give, e.g. a 1/3 pixel vertical line being either red, green, or blue; and text rendered using this would exhibit heavy colour fringing -- example.  The explanation you give as to why Cleartype works despite this with fonts is not correct: lots of fonts do indeed have many vertical and horizontal lines as part of lots of letters.  The reason Cleartype works is that it isn't just unfiltered subpixel rendering.  Have a read through  for an explanation. -- simxp (talk) 16:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, I stand corrected.  That information should really be incorporated into the Wikipedia article somehow.  I've read several articles about ClearType, but none of them acknowledged this issue or mentioned any low-pass filter stage.  So...  how do you explain the people who see blurry colors around the text?  Is the low-pass filter an imperfect approximation?  Loqui (talk) 16:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah... I just re-enabled ClearType and ran the ClearType Tuner utility, but I still see very conspicuous green and red discolorations around the edges of the text.  (I also noticed that whereas normal font-smoothing reverts to crisp black+white below about 9 points, ClearType smooths the small sizes as well.)  So it seems that the low-pass filter reduces errors, but does not completely remove them.  If subpixel rendering really worked, why is it only used for fonts?  Why doesn't Windows use it for everything?  Loqui (talk) 17:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

text:  I think that everyone would see the lower "exerc" as fuzzier - It looks that way to me, and sub-pixel rendering works for my eyes.  The image seems to have antialiasing that is excessive to what is really needed  Is it a real image, or a simulation?  It is news to me that some people react badly to cleartype.  Your theory sounds reasonable, but we'd need a source to include it in the article or else it is original research.  I think it's Google-time again. Algr 07:30, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not every human has the same sight 

message: MS has implemented ClearType as default in Internet Explorer, but not in Windows.  Thus, other browsers do not have the same effect unless users select the ClearType effect in Windows.  With the ground Internet Explorer is losing in the market, I have to wonder if this is a strategic effort. M) (talk) 21:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Cleartype *is* the default in the latest version of Windows (Vista), for IE and all other Windows programs, including Firefox, Opera etc.  -- simxp (talk) 00:11, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strategic ClearType implementation? 

message: I don't think it can meet the  Wikipedia standards for references. I will eventually remove this section unless someone finds some statistics to back it up. Linking to some message board posts is not sufficient. Besides, the expert opinions in the "human vision" section already cover the same ground. VasileGaburici (talk) 22:01, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There are a few papers (Dillon et al, etc...) that show individual preference is a much more important than the presence of ClearType. Plus, hundreds of blogs complaining about how blurry it is. I'm too lazy, but someone should at least mention that there's been a (noisy?) minority of users that get headaches, eyestrain, etc... Google can give examples. 188.60.14.168 (talk) 16:55, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  User Opinion section 

message: The article section Sensitivity to display orientation states that:
:Vertical sub pixel structures are fully supported in . . . Windows Vista (referred to as "Y-direction anti-aliasing" in the section on the Windows Presentation Foundation).
The reference in the Windows Presentation Foundation that I believe was intended to support this claim is to this page. However, that article discusses Y-directional anti-aliasing of horizontally sub-pixellated displays, optimizing redering of horizontally shallow curves on such displays. While Vista may have support for rotated monitors, the reference provided does not give authority for that proposition. 
Does anyone have any current information on this?
Bongomatic 02:37, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: People really do use Wikipedia--so incorrect information here propagates. Look at this [forum discussion]. Bongomatic 12:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vertical display orientation 

message: The following line was removed by Bongomatic:
:Additionally, some users http://www.west-wind.com/Weblog/posts/2634.aspxhttp://maximumpcguides.com/windows-vista/turn-off-clear-type-in-internet-explorer/http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000651.htmlhttp://www.css3.info/cleartype-added-to-webkit/http://www.windows7taskforce.com/view/2164http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-IE/w7desktop/thread/f180e803-3317-4433-8fd2-63aadaecc2d2 have reported headaches when using ClearType.
For reasons of being POV and not having reliable sources. I included several sources, to point out this seemed to affect multiple people. Given that the previous sentences cite MS (POV?) or are citationless, I think one sentence mentioning this is not out of line.
:ClearType and similar technologies work on the theory that variations in intensity are more noticeable than variations in color. Thus, when ClearType sacrifices color accuracy in order to increase luminance detail, the overall effect—as seen by human eyes—should be an improvement for most people.
:According to MSDN website,Windows Presentation Foundation ClearType Registry Settings Microsoft acknowledges that "[t]ext that is rendered with ClearType can also appear significantly different when viewed by individuals with varying levels of color sensitivity. Some individuals can detect slight differences in color better than others."
Any thoughts? 92.105.96.90 (talk) 10:09, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Additional comments - the MSDN link has at least 4 users specifically commenting on headaches, with others complaining about usability. There is also an official MS solution. There are also various blogs cited mentioning headaches (I *know*), which, while not notable, don't have any particular axe to grind with MS (ie: they are not POV, but are perhaps lack reputability). Is all this not enough to warrant mentioing that "Some users have reported headaches"? 92.105.96.90 (talk) 10:24, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "Some" in a universe of however many hundreds of millions of Windows users is inherently non-NPOV unless some reliable source reports it as a statistically significant issue. Bongomatic 10:28, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: How about Sheedy 2007 (ClearType sub-pixel text rendering: Preference, legibility and reading performance)? 92.105.96.90 (talk) 10:54, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: What does it say on the topic? Bongomatic 12:28, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Headaches 

message: "Most printers already use such small pixels that aliasing is rarely a problem"
Is there any documentation for that statement?
The HP printer I have uses sub-pixel anti-aliasing. It does it by creating smaller-than full size dots. At a resolution of 1000 dpi, you have large dots in the centre of a letter, and small dots at the edges, so that the edges do not show quantisation errors.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.148.53.251 (talk) 04:20, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: In any case, no need to make that claim in an article on ClearType rather than one on subpixel rendering, where it would be on-point. Bongomatic 05:30, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Printers 

message: Looks like MS is redefining this: http://jtkuwar.com/446/microsoft-introduced-microsoft-surface-combination-of-tablet-and-pc  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.74.176.247 (talk) 15:46, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Microsoft Surface and "ClearType" display 

message: I removed the copyediting tag, but I take no credit in the July 2013 GOCE drive, as there was nothing to be done.--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:04, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you really think that sentences like "ClearType was invented in the Microsoft e-Books team by Bert Keely and Greg Hitchcock." don't sound awkward? JMP EAX (talk) 10:28, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

text: I've already changed phrasing like "The hinting expert Beat Stamm" to "Hinting expert Beat Stamm". Not that I have anything against him, but he's probably not the only "hinting expert" on the planet, as the original phrasing might have suggested. And the same goes for another expert cited. JMP EAX (talk) 10:37, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyedit removed. 

message: Why doesn't this note the obvious stepping created by the fact that ClearType doesn't support vertical antialiasing, whereas other methods (such as used by Ubuntu, OS X, and Firefox) do both, leading to a much smoother effect? — Supuhstar * — 05:11, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stepping 

message: A lot of the article uses "ClearType" rather generically, and while that may be more or less ok when it's just a stand-in  for "subpixel rendering", in many other cases it's not clear about which implementation it is talking about. JMP EAX (talk) 09:47, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  tags 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on ClearType. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add  after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.microsoft.com/iplicensing/productDetail.aspx?productTitle=ClearType
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 14:57, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: OK, so, riddle me this.
Basically all new computers now have graphics systems *baked into their CPUs*, never mind what they might have present on the peripheral bus, that would make dedicated renderstations of old (like, from the introduction of Win7, and certaintly anything from the initial debut of Cleartype in XP / the plugin version that could be hacked into Win98/ME/2k) give up and lie crying in the corner curled up in the foetal position. They can make amazing 3D worlds that spread across three monitors or appear with subtle differences to each eye in a pair of goggles, and, if you're conservative with the detail settings, truck along at a solid 60 frames per second with no bother. Or if that's not your bag, you can instead hook up to a 3840x2160 HDR/HFR large format TV and play gorgeous high-motion videos without it hardly stressing them at all.
But the act of running a word processor and font engine that, at the core functional level, has changed little in the last QUARTER OF A CENTURY (at which point it was entirely usable on teen-Mhz 386SXes and, theoretically at least, 286s and maybe even 8088s if enough additional memory was installed and therefore, for the purposes of this comparison, can be discounted as the source of any kind of meaningful CPU load, if it's been programmed right), whilst performing local on-the-fly ops to each generated letter that essentially amount to "render at 3x the normal width on a stretched offscreen copy of the underlying page, with low-grade subpixel multisampled anti-aliasing, then copy one colour channel from each pixel in a set of three into the actual screen memory" - not even doing what the OS really should now be capable of, IE drawing everything to that stretched buffer and making a similar decimation-by-thirds copy into screen memory during every Vblank where a "something's changed" flag is set, which would use as much overall VRAM for the buffers at 1920x1080 as would a single-page, non-double-buffered 3840x2160 image (ie about 24mb, which is pocket change these days) and therefore be absolutely no trouble at all - is so punishing to the average computer that Microsoft have had to disable it completely (not even "offer it as a disabled-by-default option for users that want it", nor "monitor system performance at first use and determine whether to use Cleartype or not") in order to maintain a sufficiently smooth-seeming typing experience?!
What. The absolute. Hell.
Come on. Either they are bullshitters of the HIGHEST order, or whoever's working on that bit of the project is an abject failure. If it's not possible to deliver smooth, responsive performance with, say, a 2.4ghz machine at 1080p and 2D cleartype, then it shouldn't have been possible with plain 2D greyscale smoothing at that rez on an 800mhz one. Or at 800x600 with anything less than a 200mhz processor of identical processing efficiency and built in graphical complexity.
Which is, to be frank, completely unbelievable. Not least because I got entirely satisfactory, no-lag, smooth-scroll performance from just such a system (eg a PR166 Cyrix, actually running at 133mhz, and with Pentium-equivalent performance closer to 150mhz, limited VRAM, and practically bugger-all effective graphics acceleration beyond the very general) at 1024x768 truecolour with that selfsame 2D greyscale antialiasing, waybackwhen. And any slowdown I've ever encountered with Word hasn't struck me as being in any way due to the rendering engine... at least, not since the last time I used a 486SLC laptop with a plain VGA chipset, clocked down to a storming fast 8mhz (yes, eight... MEGAhertz) for battery saving, from its usual 33. It's been all the ancilliary crap they load onto it outside of the core keyboard-input and letter-drawing functionality, which causes a momentary hiccup even with an SSD and a deeply pregnant pause if you're still using a platter HDD as your system disc, whilst it stops to think about and then load some enormous module from the far, darkest, dusty reaches of the filesystem. Or then has to take thirty seconds dragging what should be a few tens of kilobytes of font data out of the swapfile because you dared present it with the onerous task of turning some of the text from Regular to Bold or Italic. Or changing its colour from black to red (I REALLY can't understand THAT one). What exactly is it even doing that requires so much memory that either it can't afford to immediately load critical things like font variation and colour value data into RAM at startup, or that said data gets dropped into the swapfile (and not only that, but into a swapfile that seems to be so full and fragmented it that clearing some space in RAM for the needed data, then transferring it, appears to be, on a 4GB machine, a trial equivalent to those of Hercules, or maybe that of attempting to run Windows 95 on an 8mb Toshiba Satellite onto which which some idiot has installed DOS Smartdrv and a load of taskbar junk)?!
(scrolling, btw, being something CT really shouldn't interfere with much, as once the glyphs are rendered it should be possible to move them vertically, and with a bit of care horizontally, with no additional system load whatsoever vs any other prerendered bitmap that needs blitting around; OK, anything completely new appearing on screen will need rendering from scratch, but if you can't draw a line or two of text at a decent speed with resolution on the order of what's used in a low end laser printer, in 2017, then you need help... and when they've actually been drawn, all you need to do is make sure to move them, and all the other scrolling elements from the page upwards, by multiples of 1.00000 pixel only, and cache at least a page or two's worth of offscreen content in each direction, at the humongous cost of a megabyte or six... both of which are generally the standard, I believe?)
Why do I get the feeling that it was licensed from someone else - IIRC the original demos weren't Microsoft at all but someone else they then rapidly bought the rights from - and that the license has now expired, or been specifically withdrawn because that person tried an Office 2016 beta and thought it was a rancid pile of dingo's kidneys, and they're a little bit hamstrung until they can come up with their own version of the idea that doesn't use any of the prior art they've been leveraging for the last 18+ years?
2010s computer not able to render typed text with subpixel smoothing fast enough to avoid the resultant motion looking choppy. Come on, pull the other one, it's got bells on.
(I'll tell you what IS choppy - a Windows 10 tablet with only 1GB of RAM installed. What idiot thought that was a good idea? It should be a framed example hung up in the school of How To Ruin An Otherwise Perfectly Competent And User Friendly Device, along with the way they've set up the touch controls and the abominations that are Facebook For Windows Tablets (avoid like the plague, use a web browser instead) and the overly heavy-handed OS/Microsoft Account integration that you get no warning about. Give it 2 gigs, fix the touch controls, rewrite from scratch or completely withdraw that app, and viciously assault the very idea of your ability to sign into your own mobile, non-3G-equipped computer being dependent on whether you can get internet access with the sharper end of a heavy duty claw hammer, and it'd be a pretty sweet deal. As is, it's regularly unpleasant for straight up boneheaded reasons, primary of which is that they've managed to create a machine intended for lightweight web browsing / social networking / email / basic document hacking / playing solitaire which is forever hung up being it's continually thrashing the swapfile, on an internal, non-replaceable/upgradable (as is the RAM) SSD that was probably never designed for that kind of intense frequent-overwrite usage and will therefore fall into an early grave along with its host machine. Dammit, Microsoft. You know, maybe the cleartype removal is nothing more than a convoluted attempt to cover over just how unbelievably sluggish some of their hardware products have proven in use...) 193.63.174.254 (talk) 16:58, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dropped in Word 2016... seemingly because of performance concerns? 

message: I think the following ClearType patents have expired in 2018-2019: 6188385, 6219025, 6225973, 6239783, 6243070, 6307566, 6393145, 6421054
Two more will expire in July 2019: 6282327, 6624828
At least two patents are valid until 2025: 6973210, 7085412
IANAL, but these can be verified using patent databases and calculators.
2001:14BA:1AFC:72F0:0:0:0:E18 (talk) 01:52, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Expired patents