Question about on-screen text quality

[z-mac]

I have a G4 MDD 1.25 tower. The video card is the stock ATI Radeon 9000 piece. The OS is Tiger.

I use the G4 with a Philips LCD monitor connected through a KVM switch.

The other computer using the KVM switch is an AMD box with an AGP Radeon 7000. I use Ubuntu 6.10 on this computer.

The on-screen text from the AMD box is nice to look at. The on-screen text from the G4 is jagged and messy. Is there anything I can do with Tiger on the G4 to improve the appearance of text?

[MacMoore]

Are both cards set to the same resolution?
Have you tried swapping the cards?

[z-mac]

The resolution is the same and I've tried changing the refresh rate.

I haven't tried to swap the cards. I believe that I can't used a non-Mac video card in the G4.

[MacMoore]

You're right, they can't be swapped.
This is a great place to learn stuff.
Thanks

[z-mac]

I've noticed that the place where the text is the worst is in the Finder.

[ben schmidt]

I've noticed that the place where the text is the worst is in the Finder.

Hmm, is it possible that the default System typeface, LucidaGrande 13 pt, that the OS X 10.4 Finder uses has been changed to a different typeface? Or that the default LucidaGrande.dfont file is missing from /System/Library/Fonts directory? The free TinkerTool.app <www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html> will reveal the Finder Font settings and allow you to Reset them to their factory defaults.
...b

[z-mac]

TinkerTool is a good utility. Thanks for the referral.

The LucidaGrande font is present and is set to be the system default. I tried resetting the defaults using TinkerTool but the result is the same.

I wonder if you're right about the font corruption.

[ben schmidt]

...hmmm. Z-mac, what's the default resolution of the Philips LCD monitor? Is that the resolution setting you've configured your Mac to use? ditto re: your PC? Unlike CRT's which are analog devices, LCD monitors are physically hard-coded to a specific resolution -- there's actually one or more transistors at each pixel location. If you're using a resoiution other than the LCD monitors' physical resolution, you're not getting the sharpest image that your LCD monitor is capable of. (For example, if the PC were set to use the actual LCD panel resolution, while the Mac were set to some other resolution, then typefaces on the Mac would appear noticeably softer and less crisp, as compared to those on the PC.)

best,
...b

[z-mac]

To see if I could identify the problem, I made room on a disk and installed OS X Tiger anew. I was wondering if my large Fink+X11 installation could have altered a font or something.

The default screen resolution after installing OS X is 1152x870. The Philips monitor's native resolution is 1280x1024. After installation and applying all critical updates, I still had the same problem with ugly fonts in the Finder. But I discovered the cause.

The problem that I had is that in the Finder window, using the List display, it is possible to right-click on a column and set view options for one folder or for all folders. I had at some point set the Finder font size to be 10pt, which is really quite ugly in LucidaGrande. I had applied this setting to all (Finder) folders.

The default Finder setting, post-installation, is to use 12pt for the font size. This does look much better indeed.

In the course of my research, I discovered that there are some people in the world who don't like how the Finder in OS X renders text:
http://www.atpm.com/12.01/paradigm.shtml

There is a replacement for the Finder that enables the user to select a different viewing font, but the application is not freeware:
http://www.cocoatech.com/index.php?topic=PathFinder

Thanks, everyone, for helping me discover the answer.

[ben schmidt]

The default screen resolution after installing OS X is 1152x870. The Philips monitor's native resolution is 1280x1024.

If you set Mac OS X (Apple > System Preferences... > Displays) to the native resolution of your LCD display, you'll get the sharpest possible image.

...b

[Allan]

Go to Preferences>Appearance

for the option of Font smoothing Style.

go for the High or Strong, which the text would be seen better.