Author Topic: Office 2013 drops cleartype, fonts a disaster. Any way to fix it? (Read 49435 times)

urlwolf · « **on:** April 25, 2013, 07:18 AM »

Otherwise, a very solid release... but office 2013 drops cleartype, fonts a disaster.

I can't use a product that reads worse than any other window on the desktop.

Any way to fix it?

eleman · « **Reply #1 on:** April 25, 2013, 08:29 AM »

Any way to fix it?
-urlwolf (April 25, 2013, 07:18 AM)

Apparently none. You have basically two options:

a) Fall back to 2010 (2003 I'd prefer, but not everyone is as old fashioned as me) and wait for microsoft to get its act together. Win 8.1 is supposed to fix some of the absurdities of 8, so can office 2015 help with idiocities of 2013. Yet MS may not return from the stupid track it is decidedly embarked upon, so this option may not work.

b) Get on the libreoffice bandwagon, and try to hold your temper when it does not open .doc files accurately. Recent 4.0.x version is much better than 3.x thingies, so you probably won't come across such horror scenarios though.

I'm going to use 2003 for a year or so, and when I finally upgrade this machine circa 2008, I'll move on to libreoffice.

Darwin · « **Reply #2 on:** April 25, 2013, 08:34 AM »

I'm not seeing these problems with Win 8/Office 2013 - everything looks great onscreen!? Am I correct in assuming that by

can't use a product that reads worse than any other window on the desktop.

you mean that text looks pixelated and "bleeds" into the white of the screen? That's how I read what you're describing (I'm not seeing it here, though). Can you describe it/provide a screenshot?

40hz · « **Reply #3 on:** April 25, 2013, 09:08 AM »

Ran into that with some clients recently. Here's the bad news:

http://answers.micro...09-bdbc-de91114d975c

eleman's suggestion to fallback or switch looks like they're your only options if you're experiencing this problem.

urlwolf · « **Reply #4 on:** April 25, 2013, 10:55 AM »

Right, so this supremely sucks, and shows that MS doesn't care about the desktop. Their flagship product, bringing 60% profit, doesn't look good on the desktop? So what? Buy a tablet

This is really braindead. Nobody is going to use office on a tablet, I bet 100% of their users are on the desktop.

My solution... this font looks ok:
HelveticaNeueLT Std Cn

Not standard, download it here:
http://downloadfonts...ica_neue_lt_std.html

urlwolf · « **Reply #5 on:** April 25, 2013, 10:57 AM »

Btw, if you spend any time on linux (ubuntu), you may have realized the freetype rendering is superior to cleartype anyway. Fortunately there's a way to get freetype on windows:

mactype

I use it and it improves chrome's rendering quite a bit.

40hz · « **Reply #6 on:** April 25, 2013, 11:27 AM »

^Agree!

I currently spend about 80-90% of my time in Linux these days. And it never ceases to surprise me how lousy type looks by comparison whenever I first boot into a Windows 7 session. Even when Cleartype is turned on.

urlwolf · « **Reply #7 on:** April 25, 2013, 12:04 PM »

With mactype (select Xmac.LCD.ubuntu), and this font for office, living inside a win vm is not bad at all. Try it

!

urlwolf · « **Reply #8 on:** May 01, 2013, 01:49 PM »

HelveticaNeueLT Std Cn looks good in onenote, bad in word.
I haven't found a single font that looks acceptable in word 2013. Way to go word team:

Let's change font rendering; not that anybody is going to notice... who reads on a screen anway?

If you find a font that works, please post here.

f0dder · « **Reply #9 on:** May 01, 2013, 04:36 PM »

Btw, if you spend any time on linux (ubuntu), you may have realized the freetype rendering is superior to cleartype anyway.
-urlwolf (April 25, 2013, 10:57 AM)

That surprises me a bit - at least a while ago, FreeType didn't include sophisticated TTF hinting because of patents... but perhaps they've been able to work around that, or by using another font format, or something?

I've never been much of a fan of font anti-aliasing anyway, neither on Windows, Linux nor OS X - looks too smudgy for me, both on CRTs and TFTs.

urlwolf · « **Reply #10 on:** May 16, 2013, 08:07 PM »

Would people here be up for collecting signatures (the electronic equivalent) to show to MS that they should care about font rendering? I could set up a site for that, if there's interest.

40hz · « **Reply #11 on:** May 16, 2013, 08:30 PM »

Would people here be up for collecting signatures (the electronic equivalent) to show to MS that they should care about font rendering? I could set up a site for that, if there's interest.
-urlwolf (May 16, 2013, 08:07 PM)

Might be worth a try. But considering how receptive they've been to complaints and push-back on things like that 'ribbon' interface and Metro, - or their refusal to even consider bringing back the start button (at least until recently) - I wouldn't hold out much hope that a write-in campaign will matter all that much to the folks in Redmond. Especially on something like fonts, which they've never been to concerned about to begin with - other than to not have to license Type-1 postscript font technology from Adobe. That's the only reason Microsoft adopted TrueType to begin with.

Apple had developed TrueType - and gave it to Microsoft for free - to help establish TTF as the new de facto type technology. This all happened when Apple was battling with Adobe over Adobe's refusal to negotiate more reasonable licensing terms. Apple figured the best way to fight Adobe was to adopt a 'scorched earth' strategy and basically pull the rug out from under Adobe with their own free standard.

Microsoft, never a company to pay for something when it didn't have to, took Apple up on their offer - and the rest is history.

IainB · « **Reply #12 on:** May 18, 2013, 02:11 AM »

This is on laptop screens:
When I was using MS Office OneNote 2007, the New Page Default template had a heading font that looked very nice - Calibri 17point.
When I upgraded to MS Office OneNote 2013, everything was glary and bright and the default heading font was Calibri Lite 20point. I thought it looked pretty awful, so changed it back to Calibri 17point. Looks much better now. The drop-down font size menu doesn't let you select "17" for that font, but if you type "17" into it, it accepts that OK.
Varela Round and Segoe UI look quite nice on laptop screens too.
However, for max reading comprehension, Times New Roman is recommended, but, if it doesn't display well or gives you eyestrain, then I'd suggest you'd probably be better off with MS Sans Serif.

IainB · « **Reply #13 on:** October 09, 2013, 02:00 AM »

Btw, if you spend any time on linux (ubuntu), you may have realized the freetype rendering is superior to cleartype anyway. Fortunately there's a way to get freetype on windows:
mactype
I use it and it improves chrome's rendering quite a bit.
_________________________________
-urlwolf (April 25, 2013, 10:57 AM)

I only this week got around to trying MacType out. Results below.
I tried it 4 ways: (System is HP ENVY 14 laptop with Win7-64 Home Premium.)
   1. Appearance: Ordinary system (ClearType ON):
   2. Appearance: Ordinary system (ClearType OFF):
   3. Appearance: MacType (ClearType ON) Default setting:
   4. Appearance: MacType (ClearType OFF) Default setting:

See samples below:
  1 and 3 look the same. ClearType ON in both cases seems best for the eyes.
  2 and 4 look the same.

I tried some of the other settings in MacType, but they didn't make for any improvement over the Default setting with ClearType ON.
Interestingly, OneNote gets different errors with its OCR (AltText). I have put the AltText below the image of each of the 4 samples (see below), so you can see the errors/omissions yourself.
MacType didn't seem to play very nicely with some of my proggies and they kept crashing.
I think I'll stick with the ordinary Windows system + ClearType ON, and just put up with the glary "flat" design of the MS Office and OneNote GUIs.
(Click image to expand it.)

Comparison - MacType v Win with-without ClearType.png

Office 2013 drops cleartype, fonts a disaster. Any way to fix it?

danno · « **Reply #14 on:** January 03, 2014, 05:33 PM »

Try MS Gothic. It appears to be a non-aliased, non-clear type font. It appears a little "blocky" because of that, but it is sharp and not smudgy. It's as if MS threw this font in the Office pack alone because it doesn't show up in the Windows/Fonts folder.

danno · « **Reply #15 on:** January 03, 2014, 05:35 PM »

"MS Gothic" font in the font drop down box on the ribbon....

danno · « **Reply #16 on:** January 03, 2014, 05:46 PM »

Or "MS PGothic;" just found it; it's not mono-spaced as is the MS Gothic.

IainB · « **Reply #17 on:** July 09, 2014, 03:12 AM »

I just happened to be playing about with Fonts today, and revisited this discussion thread.
Thought I should report that the MS Gothic (mono-spaced) and MS PGothic (proportional) fonts - as suggested by @danno - look pretty 'orrible on the Toshiba L855D laptop in OneNote 2013 (under Win8.1-64).

urlwolf · « **Reply #18 on:** April 10, 2015, 12:14 AM »

Things are getting iffy in windowsland re: fonts.
Cleartype getting replaced by directwrite (or whatever the new tech for font rendering is called; the horrible one I call it

).
More and more apps are moving to the new rendering, and only some provide an option to 'disable graphics-accelerated rendering' or some such. Chrome and mailbird do have a fallback option. Using it, plus mactype is saving me.

But mactype is abandonware, and it's not problem-free.

Right now any office 2013 app is unusable on a big monitor with low DPI (for me). mactype doesn't help there. If this is the direction win desktop is taking (that is, more apps being unaccessible to mactype's hack)... I cannot use this platform anymore. This is a big deal for me. I don't particularly like desktop linux anymore. Nor mac

How are things looking on your side? Anyone finding any fixes?
Here's one: http://www.thewindow...-scaling-office-2013

The fact is that windows + mactype offers the best font rendering on any platform. It's just a pity that to get it I need to depend on an unsuported piece of abandonware

urlwolf · « **Reply #19 on:** April 10, 2015, 12:55 AM »

One can vote up the bug here:
https://windows.user...ge=3&per_page=20

Although it will most likely be ignored if history is of any use.
Easiest option is to get a high DPI monitor eventually

Which is something only the privileged part of the world can do.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #20 on:** April 10, 2015, 02:20 AM »

Things are getting iffy in windowsland re: fonts.
Cleartype getting replaced by directwrite (or whatever the new tech for font rendering is called; the horrible one I call it ).
More and more apps are moving to the new rendering, and only some provide an option to 'disable graphics-accelerated rendering' or some such. Chrome and mailbird do have a fallback option. Using it, plus mactype is saving me.

But mactype is abandonware, and it's not problem-free.

Right now any office 2013 app is unusable on a big monitor with low DPI (for me)...
-urlwolf (April 10, 2015, 12:14 AM)

Just so I can understand the problem, what about for example Kingsoft Office? It's fine (sorta!) if it doesn't work for you, but just so I know what the problem is, I don't even know where to look to find your font rendering tech in that program!