Is it true that iOS uses a different font renderer than Mac OS? I thought that the fonts on an iPhone looked pretty good actually. Perhaps they are referring to apps that decide to use the FreeType renderer?
Yes, iOS uses (parts of) FreeType. Imagine the shitstorm if they shipped their fuzzy, washed-out default rendering! The issue is that most people buying smartphones are not die-hard Apple fans like the buyers of their other offerings, so the font rentering would be pretty hard to sell.
> I thought that the fonts on an iPhone looked pretty good actually.
That's because FreeType (with the right patches and settings) is already pretty much the best font renderer (with a few exceptions).
I live in the EU and I've been using freetype-freeworld package for years before the patents expired. but still... amazing :)
EDIT: patents have expired
Do you have a reference for this rather surprising claim?
“Some products which use FreeType for rendering fonts on screen or on paper, either exclusively or partially: [...] iOS, Apple's mobile operating system for iPhones and iPads”
iOS (née iPones OS) never used subpixel rendering, and since the introduction of HiDPI it isn’t needed anymore either. I can imagine that using parts of Freetype instead of using the whole of OS X’s Quartz would’ve made the code for iOS more compact.
http://bjango.com/articles/subpixeltext/
Given that all of the iPhone models and many of the iPad models have HiDPI screens nowadays, I doubt Apple will be using Adobe’s extension, since it’s mostly a problem with low resolution displays.
Judging by the letter shapes, I would say it's highly likely iOS uses the same renderer as OS X, at least for common fonts like Helvetica Neue.
However, I don't know if I've seen any CFF fonts. Perhaps this is where FreeType would come in?
http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2010/12/the-benefits-of-...
http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2011/09/postscript-comes...
“There is a marked difference between letter shapes rendered with FreeType and with Quartz.”
Oh, definitely. FreeType has always looked like crap (to me) and iOS never did, so I don’t believe iOS’ font renderer is 100% FreeType.
I use Arch Linux but even here it's not much of a hassle given that there is a very informative wiki page not to mention packages with good configuration presets (infinality).
Yes, exactly!