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#1
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Varying density of displayed text
I'm very new with 8.1, having only given up XP at Christmas. I have
noticed that characters along a line of text exhibit bands of higher and lower density. It seems to affect all sorts of screens, system, Word, Thunderbird, you name it. I have tried running ClearText (or ClearType) which has improved things a lot, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it, in the hope I shall be able to get rid of it altogether. PC is a Lenovo core7 with 12 GB. Monitor is an Acer 17-inch running 1280x1024 All advice appreciated, please. -- John www.weather.johnwnice.co.uk |
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#2
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Varying density of displayed text
John Nice wrote:
I'm very new with 8.1, having only given up XP at Christmas. I have noticed that characters along a line of text exhibit bands of higher and lower density. It seems to affect all sorts of screens, system, Word, Thunderbird, you name it. I have tried running ClearText (or ClearType) which has improved things a lot, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it, in the hope I shall be able to get rid of it altogether. PC is a Lenovo core7 with 12 GB. Monitor is an Acer 17-inch running 1280x1024 All advice appreciated, please. Even if you took a screenshot (shift-PrintScrn), we might not see it. As it's possibly a monitor issue. On some monitors, this is called "banding". A reason would be, the usage of a 6bit TN panel, dithered to give 8 bit color. It means the panel doesn't have the colors to match the situation. Your text characters could be rendered with ClearType, which feathers the edges of the characters. But I don't think typically a user would describe that as an instance of "banding". You can see some funny colors on the edges of characters in that case. Usually Windows has a (tuning) panel where you can adjust the mode of operation of ClearType, to suit the pixel layout of the monitor. Banding might normally show up on a large solid-color object with a color gradient across it. Monitors without deep enough color representation, show you some bands. Even expensive monitors have done this, but for different reasons (usage of too many digital processing steps, flashing a band of black to increase the perceived monitor response rate GTG, and so on). And when you're doing an image quality test, make sure the monitor is set to native resolution, to make the test as fair as possible for the monitor. It sounds like you're doing that, so I don't think this is the issue. If the Windows 8 computer doesn't have a driver for the video card, the built-in fallback VESA driver runs the screen at 1024x768. I eventually replaced the card in my other Windows 8 computer, so I no longer have to look at a 1024x768 distorted screen, on a 1440x900 17" Acer monitor. It's reasons like that, you should be looking into the Display resolution setting, and make sure that it's actually the native value for the monitor. If you want further help, take a screenshot of the LCD panel with a digital camera. This is not the easiest thing to do, so don't be surprised if it takes half the day to get a decent result. You can post the image, on a site like tinypic.com. Very few sites accept photo uploads without an account, and that's one of the few remaining sites. I don't like the advertising methods on that site, but you'll learn about that when you get there (kill Firefox in Task Manager, if you have a problem after the upload is completed). Paul |
#3
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Varying density of displayed text
On Sat, 07 Mar 2015 20:23:39 +0000, John Nice wrote:
I'm very new with 8.1, having only given up XP at Christmas. I have noticed that characters along a line of text exhibit bands of higher and lower density. It seems to affect all sorts of screens, system, Word, Thunderbird, you name it. I have tried running ClearText (or ClearType) which has improved things a lot, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it, in the hope I shall be able to get rid of it altogether. PC is a Lenovo core7 with 12 GB. Monitor is an Acer 17-inch running 1280x1024 All advice appreciated, please. What is the native resolution of the monitor? If it's not 1280x1024 that might be the cause. Or is it a CRT? That could have interesting effects. It might be an interesting experiment in any case to try different resolutions. Even LCD monitors can handle non-native resolutions, and that might shed some light on the situation. -- Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch) |
#4
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Varying density of displayed text
John Nice wrote:
I have noticed that characters along a line of text exhibit bands of higher and lower density. It seems to affect all sorts of screens, system, Word, Thunderbird, you name it. I have tried running ClearText (or ClearType) which has improved things a lot, ... PC is a Lenovo core7 with 12 GB. Monitor is an Acer 17-inch running 1280x1024 What is the *native* resolution of the screen? Use that. Anything else results in artifacts in the display (tinging, less focus, etc) due to interpolation required across multiple pixels. This does not apply to CRT monitors (which would have a different cause for banding). You may have masked some of the non-native resolution artifacts by using Cleartype. By setting ClearType to use a fuzzier interpolation, the artifacts may be less visible. "Acer 17-inch" doesn't identify the actual monitor. That means you will have to read its documentation to determine what is the native resolution for your monitor (if it is not a CRT monitor). On LCD monitors, use their native resolution. Even if everything looks smaller because you bought a larger monitor, you should use the native resolution. Larger monitors often result in smaller text because the DPI setting in Windows is still used at that smaller resolution of the larger screen. The same number of pixels get used so smaller pixels (for larger screens) means smaller text. You can up the DPI to make text more legible. Long ago I changed the default DPI (96) to 125. This made the text much easier to read; however, although Microsoft published DPI documentation on how applications should handle different DPI settings, still only a few programs are DPI-aware. The result is that you may see truncated or out-of-dialog-window text. I had one app that opened huge (was fixed) to fill almost the entire screen and I couldn't get at the title bar to move the window up to get at the text at the bottom. The author didn't bother to make his program DPI aware but instead move the buttons from the bottom to the top of his window. |
#5
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Varying density of displayed text
John Nice wrote:
I'm very new with 8.1, having only given up XP at Christmas. I have noticed that characters along a line of text exhibit bands of higher and lower density. It seems to affect all sorts of screens, system, Word, Thunderbird, you name it. I have tried running ClearText (or ClearType) which has improved things a lot, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it, in the hope I shall be able to get rid of it altogether. PC is a Lenovo core7 with 12 GB. Monitor is an Acer 17-inch running 1280x1024 All advice appreciated, please. Hi John, - I know that many 19-inch screen (standard ratio) typically have and supoort 1280 x 1024 pixels You mentioned 17"...Does your monitor have a proportion width to height of 4:3, 16:10, or 16:9 -- ....winston msft mvp consumer apps |
#6
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Varying density of displayed text
On 07/03/2015 20:23, John Nice wrote:
I'm very new with 8.1, having only given up XP at Christmas. I have noticed that characters along a line of text exhibit bands of higher and lower density. It seems to affect all sorts of screens, system, Word, Thunderbird, you name it. I have tried running ClearText (or ClearType) which has improved things a lot, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it, in the hope I shall be able to get rid of it altogether. PC is a Lenovo core7 with 12 GB. Monitor is an Acer 17-inch running 1280x1024 All advice appreciated, please. I went to advanced system settings, selected the best performance option, restarted and the problem was gone. It also cleared the nasty dropped shadow type on the icons. A few ligatures ( ff, ffi, fl ) still showed up darker, but Clear Text sorted them out. The monitor is 1280x1024 native, by the way. When I've an hour or two to play I'll try more digging in the advanced system settings to isolate it. Thanks for all the ideas. -- John www.weather.johnwnice.co.uk |
#7
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Varying density of displayed text
John Nice wrote:
On 07/03/2015 20:23, John Nice wrote: I'm very new with 8.1, having only given up XP at Christmas. I have noticed that characters along a line of text exhibit bands of higher and lower density. It seems to affect all sorts of screens, system, Word, Thunderbird, you name it. I have tried running ClearText (or ClearType) which has improved things a lot, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it, in the hope I shall be able to get rid of it altogether. PC is a Lenovo core7 with 12 GB. Monitor is an Acer 17-inch running 1280x1024 All advice appreciated, please. I went to advanced system settings, selected the best performance option, restarted and the problem was gone. It also cleared the nasty dropped shadow type on the icons. A few ligatures ( ff, ffi, fl ) still showed up darker, but Clear Text sorted them out. The monitor is 1280x1024 native, by the way. When I've an hour or two to play I'll try more digging in the advanced system settings to isolate it. Thanks for all the ideas. I usually first set to "Best performance" to turn off all that glitzy crap and then just select the features that I really want. Sure is nice to have a snappy UI instead of one scrolling, fading in/out, and other useless glitz. If you enable each feature one at a time and retested, you'd probably find the glitz feature that caused the unwanted banding in the display. Probably a waste of time, though, since it's likely most of those glitz features aren't needed by you (but a few are handy). |
#8
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Varying density of displayed text
On 08/03/2015 18:18, VanguardLH wrote:
John Nice wrote: On 07/03/2015 20:23, John Nice wrote: I'm very new with 8.1, having only given up XP at Christmas. I have noticed that characters along a line of text exhibit bands of higher and lower density. It seems to affect all sorts of screens, system, Word, Thunderbird, you name it. I have tried running ClearText (or ClearType) which has improved things a lot, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it, in the hope I shall be able to get rid of it altogether. PC is a Lenovo core7 with 12 GB. Monitor is an Acer 17-inch running 1280x1024 All advice appreciated, please. I went to advanced system settings, selected the best performance option, restarted and the problem was gone. It also cleared the nasty dropped shadow type on the icons. A few ligatures ( ff, ffi, fl ) still showed up darker, but Clear Text sorted them out. The monitor is 1280x1024 native, by the way. When I've an hour or two to play I'll try more digging in the advanced system settings to isolate it. Thanks for all the ideas. I usually first set to "Best performance" to turn off all that glitzy crap and then just select the features that I really want. Sure is nice to have a snappy UI instead of one scrolling, fading in/out, and other useless glitz. If you enable each feature one at a time and retested, you'd probably find the glitz feature that caused the unwanted banding in the display. Probably a waste of time, though, since it's likely most of those glitz features aren't needed by you (but a few are handy). You're right: so many functions now are so fast. I'm perfectly happy with the way things are, so any investigation is going right to the bottom of the job jar. Actually, I've just downloaded a little (117 MB!) update for Intel graphics. Who knows if that might have an effect? -- John www.weather.johnwnice.co.uk |
#9
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Varying density of displayed text
John Nice wrote:
I've just downloaded a little (117 MB!) update for Intel graphics. Who knows if that might have an effect? New code: might fix old bugs, might not, and can introduce its own new bugs. Newer isn't always better, just different. |
#10
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Varying density of displayed text
VanguardLH wrote:
John Nice wrote: I've just downloaded a little (117 MB!) update for Intel graphics. Who knows if that might have an effect? New code: might fix old bugs, might not, and can introduce its own new bugs. Newer isn't always better, just different. Or the same. A graphics update can be for multiple devices yet changes only applicable to specific devices. -- ....winston msft mvp consumer apps |
#11
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Varying density of displayed text
"...winston‫" wrote:
VanguardLH wrote: John Nice wrote: I've just downloaded a little (117 MB!) update for Intel graphics. Who knows if that might have an effect? New code: might fix old bugs, might not, and can introduce its own new bugs. Newer isn't always better, just different. Or the same. A graphics update can be for multiple devices yet changes only applicable to specific devices. And, in the vein of "same", some updates are merely to reflect a change of ownership of the code, like when Skydrive got renamed to OneDrive. The new owner wants their new acquisition identified as their property. |
#12
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Varying density of displayed text
VanguardLH wrote:
"...winston‫" wrote: VanguardLH wrote: John Nice wrote: I've just downloaded a little (117 MB!) update for Intel graphics. Who knows if that might have an effect? New code: might fix old bugs, might not, and can introduce its own new bugs. Newer isn't always better, just different. Or the same. A graphics update can be for multiple devices yet changes only applicable to specific devices. And, in the vein of "same", some updates are merely to reflect a change of ownership of the code, like when Skydrive got renamed to OneDrive. The new owner wants their new acquisition identified as their property. That does occur..though in the case of SkyDrive and OneDrive the owner and Team were one and the same though as 'OneDrive' matures more Office Team co-ownership and development is central to its long term applicability and evolution. -- ....winston msft mvp consumer apps |
#13
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Varying density of displayed text
"...winston‫" wrote:
VanguardLH wrote: "...winston‫" wrote: VanguardLH wrote: John Nice wrote: I've just downloaded a little (117 MB!) update for Intel graphics. Who knows if that might have an effect? New code: might fix old bugs, might not, and can introduce its own new bugs. Newer isn't always better, just different. Or the same. A graphics update can be for multiple devices yet changes only applicable to specific devices. And, in the vein of "same", some updates are merely to reflect a change of ownership of the code, like when Skydrive got renamed to OneDrive. The new owner wants their new acquisition identified as their property. That does occur..though in the case of SkyDrive and OneDrive the owner and Team were one and the same though as 'OneDrive' matures more Office Team co-ownership and development is central to its long term applicability and evolution. The name change wasn't Microsoft's choice. Sky, and ISP, sued and won on the name inference. So Microsoft, despite the owner and team were one, had to change the product name. They made code changes to reflect the product name change although you can still see references in the program and description where Skydrive is mentioned. Users had no reason to update the Skydrive local client except due to the product name change. To users, there was no change in functionality between the two versions for just a name change. The court ruling was back in June 2013. I don't remember when Microsoft eventually came out with a new version just to change product identity. Microsoft didn't make a public announcement about the name change until Jan 2014. The new version was just a re-branding. My example of "change of ownership" should've been "change of ownership or change of name". The point was that the change(s) for the new version were trivial. |
#14
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Varying density of displayed text
VanguardLH wrote:
"...winston‫" wrote: VanguardLH wrote: "...winston‫" wrote: VanguardLH wrote: John Nice wrote: I've just downloaded a little (117 MB!) update for Intel graphics. Who knows if that might have an effect? New code: might fix old bugs, might not, and can introduce its own new bugs. Newer isn't always better, just different. Or the same. A graphics update can be for multiple devices yet changes only applicable to specific devices. And, in the vein of "same", some updates are merely to reflect a change of ownership of the code, like when Skydrive got renamed to OneDrive. The new owner wants their new acquisition identified as their property. That does occur..though in the case of SkyDrive and OneDrive the owner and Team were one and the same though as 'OneDrive' matures more Office Team co-ownership and development is central to its long term applicability and evolution. The name change wasn't Microsoft's choice. Sky, and ISP, sued and won on the name inference. So Microsoft, despite the owner and team were one, had to change the product name. They made code changes to reflect the product name change although you can still see references in the program and description where Skydrive is mentioned. Users had no reason to update the Skydrive local client except due to the product name change. To users, there was no change in functionality between the two versions for just a name change. The court ruling was back in June 2013. I don't remember when Microsoft eventually came out with a new version just to change product identity. Microsoft didn't make a public announcement about the name change until Jan 2014. The new version was just a re-branding. My example of "change of ownership" should've been "change of ownership or change of name". The point was that the change(s) for the new version were trivial. The reason for the name change is old news. Apparently you're unaware that the update included code modification for integration across all other MSFT capable OneDrive/SkyDrive products including compatibility and a few security improvements for connecting to local OneDrive Desktop installed pcs via the web UI OneDrive option for Win7 Trusted PC's which coincided with a hardening of the Outlook.com web UI for security proofs. i.e. More to it than (just branding). -- ....winston msft mvp consumer apps |
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