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Subpixel rendering (used in the font referenced in the article) really ought to count as cheating. It effectively increases the horizontal resolution, so it can only make a real claim to be "smallest" in the vertical dimension. Furthermore, if you blow it up (which I'm guessing plenty of people are inclined to do), it actually looks worse, whereas the true bitmap font becomes, while clearly pixelated, more legible.

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It's not just when you blow it up - I found the bitmapped font considerably more legible at 1:1 size. Hinting definitely makes sense at larger sizes, but when it's that small it tends to look a bit muddy to me.

Hell yes. Normally I complain that sub-pixel rendering suffers too badly from colour fringing on any display with a low enough resolution for it to be worthwhile.

In that case I'd say that the colour fringing suffered a little from having a hint of font almost visible beneath it, whereas the bitmapped font was actually pretty decent.

> Furthermore, if you blow it up (which I'm guessing plenty of people are inclined to do), it actually looks worse

Sure, if you naively blow it up it looks worse. But what if you convert the subpixels into real pixels?

Then the font would cease to be notable for anything other than its ugliness, as its size (measured in pixels) is now greater.

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