Abstract
We analyze the quality of condensed text on LCD displays, generated with unhinted and hinted bilevel characters, with traditional anti-aliased and with perceptually-tuned grayscale characters. Hinted bi-level characters and perceptually-tuned grayscale characters improve the quality of displayed small size characters (8pt, 6pt) up to a line condensation factor of 80%. At higher condensation factors, the text becomes partly illegible. In such situations, traditional anti-aliased grayscale character seems to be the most robust variant. We explore the utility of perceptually-tuned grayscale fonts for improving the legibility of condensed text. A small advantage was found for text searching, compared to bilevel fonts. This advantage is consistent with human vision models applied to reading.
The grayscale figures described in the text can be downloaded from the Web and visualized on a display device (http://diwww.epfl.ch/w31sp/pub/papers/grayscale/index.html).
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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Morris, R.A., Hersch, R.D., Coimbra, A. (1998). Legibility of condensed perceptually-tuned grayscale fonts. In: Hersch, R.D., André, J., Brown, H. (eds) Electronic Publishing, Artistic Imaging, and Digital Typography. RIDT 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1375. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0053277
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0053277
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