  Due to their simplicity and versatility of design, straight strip or
rectangular pad anode structures are frequently employed with micro-pattern gas
detectors to reconstruct high precision space points for various tracking
applications. The particle impact point is typically determined by
interpolating the charge collected by several neighboring pads. However, to
effectively extract the inherent positional information, the lateral spacing of
the straight pads must be significantly smaller than the extent of the charge
cloud. In contrast, highly interleaved anode patterns, such as zigzags, can
adequately sample the charge with a pitch comparable to the size of the charge
cloud or even larger. This has the considerable advantage of providing the same
performance while requiring far fewer instrumented channels. Additionally, the
geometric parameters defining such zigzag structures may be tuned to provide a
uniform detector response without the need for so-called pad response
functions, while simultaneously maintaining excellent position resolution. We
have measured the position resolution of a variety of zigzag shaped anode
patterns optimized for various MPGDs, including GEM, Micromegas, and
micro-RWELL and compared this performance to the same detectors equipped with
straight pads of varying pitch. We report on the performance results of each
readout structure, evaluated under identical conditions in a test beam.
