3/30/2026 at 8:08:12 PM
Something I never liked about this game is its showing it in your browser at your chosen font size.Chrome (assuming you're using Chrome) draws it a specific way. This does not match how Freetype (using typical tuning) or DirectWrite draws it. Chrome's choices in font renderer tuning and blending makes it kind of split the difference between Windows-style and OSX-style, and isn't native to either.
What it should be doing is showing you lossless screenshots of actual in-app renders at different sizes. Some in Chrome (to represent the Electron apps), some in DirectWrite, some in OSX post-Retina, etc.
Some fonts look amazing at larger sizes, but are unreadable at smaller ones. Some perform exceptionally well at smaller sizes. Some look great on every font renderer but OSX's, but some only look right on OSX and look bad everywhere else.
I've sorta played this game with myself, in a semi-objective way: take a bunch of fonts, ignore the subjective art nature of them, and throw them at a bunch of common renderers and see what the optimal size is, and then sort by smallest legible size.
If we define Fira Code, the most popular code font out there, as the bare minimum, 8 of the ones I tested beat it, while 17 were worse.
https://github.com/Diablo-D3/dotfiles/blob/master/fontsizes....
by DiabloD3
3/30/2026 at 10:45:10 PM
Totally agree, the same fonts at the same pixel sizes often look massively different in different environments. I -love- macOS’ native font rendering, but have been unsuccessfull in emulating it on Linux :/by bool3max
4/1/2026 at 8:32:32 PM
Freetype can render almost indistinguishably from OSX post-Retina.Set `FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="cff:no-stem-darkening=0 autofitter:no-stem-darkening=0"`, and then also enable (S)light hinting on LoDPI, or None on HiDPI. Also, disable subpixel and use greyscale only.
OSX looks the way it does because they use excessive stem darkening combined with incorrect gamma blending. GDI, WPF/UWP/WinUI, most ClearType/DirectWrite consumers, GTK, and most browsers also do incorrect gamma blending as well.
Qt is the exception. It enables stem darkening by default, but then uses correct gamma blending. Unfortunately, this is the objectively correct way of rendering, everyone else is doing it wrong.
The only thing you can't do is OSX gamma blends incorrectly for 1.8 on a 2.2-2.4 screen. Everyone else blends incorrectly for sRGB/2.2 on a 2.2-2.4 screen. Light on dark's obscene behavior on OSX shouldn't be replicated.
If you want the opposite, and make it look like Windows, force stem darkening off (use the above env, but set both to 1), and set hinting to Full to make it look like pre-Cleartype, or Medium to make it look like DirectWrite.
by DiabloD3