Conversation

Replying to

From replies, it does appear some of the problem I'm having is specific to Android (maybe Android 8). So that's less bizarre than it could be. Problem: SOME of the "surprising" heights/descenders (g, m, n, r, t) were intentional. I can't tell what's a bug

Quote Tweet

chris willmore

@cwillmore

Aug 11, 2021

Replying to @mcclure111

here’s iOS for comparison; definitely something squirrelly happening with that font on android

194

mcc

@mcclure111

Aug 11, 2021

Continuing to be totally confused which of the problems with this font are platform-specific render bugs and which are intentional bad decisions. Have now seen screenshots of the font on Android 10, and Firefox on Windows 10, with the sPoNGeBoB eFfFeCt

Quote Tweet

Micha

@ShuffleCode

Aug 11, 2021

Joar, nicht so nice. Der neue Font sieht ziemlich verballert aus: twitter.com/mcclure111/sta…

Show this thread

192

mcc

@mcclure111

Aug 11, 2021

But on the other hand, the hugeass descender on lowercase "t" on my phone looks even with the "overshoot" line (letter "o") on other people's machines. So... was it *intentional* that t has a descender? How much of the bad was on purpose

140

This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more

Replying to

Incredible. Twitter made a big announcement saying "hey we did it, we made our own font!" and it turns out they missed an important aspect of the font to make it look good on THE MAJORITY OF SMART PHONES

Replying to

and

It looks pretty bad on any non-HiDPI screen. macOS fonts have always been blurry without HiDPI since they don't bother with hinting. Windows applies a bunch of fancy technology to make high quality fonts look great and has a bunch of hacks for legacy low quality ones like Arial.

Replying to

and

Linux/Android have the same kind of rendering as Windows for modern fonts with proper hinting data. They aren't as good at making legacy fonts with screwed up hinting data look good but there are compatible replacements like Liberation with proper hinting data included in them.

Replying to

and

Linux only uses vertical hinting data now since with a typical monitor and orientation there's 3x as much horizontal resolution from subpixels. If that's missing, it does auto-hinting, which screws up the shape so it doesn't look blurry like it always does on non-HiDPI macOS.

Replying to

and

Windows is similar without proper hinting data but it's a bit smarter. Twitter's font doesn't look much better on Windows vs. properly configured open source font rendering stack with the patented features enabled (i.e. default on Ubuntu, Arch, Android, etc. but not RHEL, etc.).

Replying to

and

I have 2x 27" 4k monitors (same model) next to each other with separate Linux and Windows computers so it's easy for me to compare. Windows is screwing it up slightly less but it's still awful. I don't understand how a huge company makes a font without hinting in 2021.

6:03 PM · Aug 12, 2021Twitter Web App

Replying to

and

It makes it very clear that Twitter only cared how it looked on high end smartphones and very high end laptops with HiDPI screens. It's going to look terrible for anyone looking at it on any typical desktop monitor. macOS vs. Windows is just blurry+non-warped vs. sharp+warped.

Replying to

and

macOS doesn't bother offering a way to have non-blurry fonts without HiDPI because their solution is only having high-end hardware + mostly smaller screens. Guess everyone working on it had Macbooks or high-end Ultrabooks + flagship Android/iOS phones so it didn't bother them.

Show replies