Fuzzy Text

I'm using DP7, chose not to upgrade yet, and have always noticed that Xara produces text that is not sharp or is slight fuzzy looking. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a fix for this or can a setting be adjusted to correct the problem? It's most apparent with plain text, not bold or italics. I've noticed other little quirks as well but will just address this issue for now.

Thanks,
Steve

Can you attach an example of the problem?
I've not had anything like that, ever.
Maybe attach a .xar file where you're having this problem, for us to see if we get the same issue.

Hi Steve -

This could be a display problem. Does the text print sharp on your desktop printer? Is the text sharp when you increase the zoom factor?

Xara does anti-alias (smooth) text as it is rendered. The text you are reading in these forums is anti-aliased.

At 96dpi, Windows screen resolution, small text must be rendered on a grid consisting of 8-12 pixels in height. If this text is displayed without anti-aliasing, it will appear rough and jagged. So intermediate pixels are created to smooth the appearance of the text and at screen resolution this is not noticeable and the text looks sharp and crisp.

The attached is a screen capture of the text in this response, magnified to 500% with no smoothing.

I hope this explains what you are seeing on your screen.

There are bitmap fonts that have been created especially for small display, that are not anti-aliased and they can be effective for websites where very small text is required.

I had the same issue yesterday and found that I had line width on my text. After selecting line width to 'none', the text was sharp again.

br

Jim

Same here, jim. Find I do that, too. Also, it's worth checking your zoom. Are you working at 100%? If it's slipped below, while processing an image, the look of he text can be affected slightly. Change the view to 100% to see the difference.

Good luck.

Ali

Thanks to everyone for your replies and suggestions. I've been away for a bit. For some reason, without changing any settings, the text is now rendering fine. If I run into the issue again I will post a file. Your responses did shed light on what the issue might be so they were not in vain.

Thanks again,
Steve

Thanks for updating us, Steve. Many of us have experienced transient booboos. If no other explanation can be found and the situation rights itself, it's likely that it was just a symptom of the complexity of our current computing environment.