Font rendering vs Mac Terminal

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Johan Ekenberg

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Oct 7, 2015, 12:42:09 PM10/7/15
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As a new iTerm2 user, I'm trying to configure default font to look the same as in standard Mac Terminal. I'm using 'Menlo Regular 12' with color F2F2F2 in both Terminal and iTerm, but for some reason the font looks different. iTerm looks slightly fuzzier and brighter/bolder. Macbook Pro Retina, see this screenshot, Terminal with settings on the left, iTerm with settings on the right. Both have Antialiasing enabled:


Any help would be greatly appreciated!


Best regards,

/Johan


George Nachman

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Oct 7, 2015, 1:06:32 PM10/7/15
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This was recently fixed in the nightly builds (iterm2.com/nightly/latest) and will be in the next beta.

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Johan Ekenberg

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Oct 8, 2015, 9:42:28 AM10/8/15
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Thanks a lot! In fact, I ended up disabling [System Preferences -> General -> LCD Font Smoothing] which solved the iTerm issue plus made fonts in other applications look crisper as well!

Best regards,
/Johan

George Nachman

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Oct 8, 2015, 12:42:06 PM10/8/15
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That seems to turn off subpixel anti-aliasing, which I'm surprised to discover really looks bad, at least on a 4k display. 

The Cadillac Kid

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Oct 8, 2015, 1:06:12 PM10/8/15
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on my 55" 4k display its a MUST to turn off lcd font smoothing or my fonts all look terrible. on my retina display I sometimes leave it on if im working in bright sun as the fonts are more bold and better to read when the ambient light is bright
-Christopher

From: 'George Nachman' via iterm2-discuss <iterm2-...@googlegroups.com>
To: iterm2-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, October 8, 2015 12:41 PM
Subject: Re: [iterm2-discuss] Font rendering vs Mac Terminal

Steve King

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Oct 8, 2015, 2:58:11 PM10/8/15
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On 2015-10-08 13:06 , 'The Cadillac Kid' via iterm2-discuss wrote:
That seems to turn off subpixel anti-aliasing, which I'm surprised to discover really looks bad, at least on a 4k display. 

I suspect a problem with how the OS is choosing either the color space or the sub-pixel order on your 4k display.  These two articles have some good information on it, and you can google for terms including "osx" and "font smoothing", "sub-pixel", "anti-aliasing", or "4k display".

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/order-of-subpixels-for-font-smoothing.1712162/
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090828224632809

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Steve King | Principal Software Engineer
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