Windows XP Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 99 Use ClearType for Better Laptop and LCD Resolution

Stop squinting at your laptop or LCD screen.
Make any laptop and LCD screen easy to read.

Many people who use laptops complain
that text is particularly difficult to read on
LCD screens. Making matters worse is that
many laptops are designed to work at very high resolutions (for
example, 1400 by 1050 pixels), and at those resolutions the small
type is particularly problematic on an LCD. The problem gets
increasingly worse, because laptop screens keep getting larger and
their resolutions keep increasing. On my 15-inch laptop with
1400-by-1050 pixel resolution, it's almost
impossible to read text. Desktop-style LCD screens also have the same
problems.

A simple hack will make text easier to read on both laptops and LCD
screens; use Microsoft's
ClearType
technology, built into XP. To enable ClearType, right-click on the
Desktop and choose Properties. Select Appearance Effects.
The Effects dialog box appears. Check the box next to
"Use the following method to smooth edges of screen
fonts." Select ClearType from the drop-down box,
click OK, then click OK again. You'll notice the
difference in how type is displayed.

You can use ClearType on a normal desktop PC monitor as well as a
laptop, but I don't recommend it. On a normal
monitor, it makes text appear blurry, and people have complained that
using it gives them headaches. I've tried it and can
vouch for thatheadaches quickly ensue.

One problem with ClearType is that XP doesn't offer
any apparent way to customize its appearance. However, there is an
online tool that lets you fine-tune its appearance so that
it's best for you. To tune ClearType, go to
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/customize/cleartype/tuner.
You'll be asked whether you want to install and run
the Microsoft Cleartype Tuning Control. Click Yes. From the page that
opens, make sure the Turn on ClearType box is checked. There are two
versions of the control; depending on your version of XP and whether
you have certain XP service packs installed, you might get one or the
other. In one of them, from the opening page, you click on Next; in
the other, from the opening page, you click on "Move
on to Step 2: Tuning ClearType Settings." Depending
on the version of the control, the next page may display two versions
of the same text and ask which looks better (One version is for RGB
monitors, and the other version for BGR monitors). Choose the text
that looks better and click Next. (One version of the control skips
this page entirely, so you may not see it.)

Next, you'll come to a page that displays a block of
text in six different ways. Click on the text that looks best and
then click on Finish. You're done;
you've tuned ClearType.

One thing you need to watch out for is that the text Microsoft
displays isn't real text at all;
it's a series of graphics that have been made to
appear as if they were text. So, the tuner won't
necessarily reflect what you'll actually see on your
system. To more accurately tune your settings, while
you're going through the tuning process, open a Word
document in another window and look at the text in the document after
you've tried different settings. The text in that
window will more accurately show you how the text will appear with
various settings.

Some users think ClearType looks better on some LCD screens than others. If you're creating screenshots for printing, you might try turning it off, since the effect doesn't always work as well on paper.

12.6.1 Hacking the Hack

When you enable
ClearType, it's
available only after you log on. So, the fonts displayed before log
on won't benefit from ClearType. You can, however,
use a Registry hack to enable Clear Type fonts even before logon. Run
the Registry Editor [Hack #68] and go
to go to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control
Panel\Desktop. Open the
FontSmoothingType entry and change its value data
to 2. (The default is 1, which
means that font smoothing is enabled, but ClearType
isn't. A value of 0 turns off
both font smoothing and ClearType.) Exit the Registry Editor and
reboot.