Get Mac-Like Font Rendering on Windows

[kvikram]

If you've ever used a Mac, then you might have a noticed that the text looks quite different. That's because the font is rendered differently and it's a little bit easier on the eyes than Windows' font rendering. Of course that's completely an opinion, but if you want to get Mac-like text rendering on Windows, then just use this software called MacType.

Download MacType: https://code.google.com/p/mactype/

This article gives a detailed analysis of the difference between Mac and Windows font rendering: http://damieng.com/blog/2007/06/13/font-rendering-philosophies-of-windows-and-mac-os-x

This image will also give you a good idea:

Spoiler

Windows rendering of Times New Roman on the left. Mac rendering on the right.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

FYI, some additional info. That article is mostly bullsh1t. What the author is is highlighting can actually be termed as a flaw as far as DTP world is considered. It would have had more merit if the author had not quoted Apples DTP background to strengthen his arguments.

The default screen rendering on Mac is far cry from being correct. One of the goals in DTP world is that rendering on screen and printing on paper are in synch. It is fine and dandy to whimsically manipulate the way the text is rendered on screen, but such manipulation means that the on screen and printed versions do not necessarily look the same.

The author quotes the "Design/DTP" Background of Apple, but let tell you that I have myself been involved in development of the Publishing software that held monopoly in the publishing world for over 20 years and in fact one of the software responsible for Apple earning its name as "the" OS for publishing professionals, but we never relied on the Mac's inbuilt rendering at all. We built our own rendering engine for our software and it positions and renders the text glyph by glyph so that the translation from screen to print is exactly same and across Platforms (Mac OS and Windows). It was bad enough that we had to reply on certain API (Which Apple kept changing/breaking over the years.) for metrics calculation for certain types of fonts.

So regardless of which platform people use for authoring and printing, it would render and print in a consistent way. It holds true for the rest of competing products of repute in this domain.