It took two months but I finally got there.
Vivaldi now displays type normally though the browser interface is slightly messed up. But Iāll take good type display, thanks. On the MacType forums, a user in China called wmjordan was in the same boat but had found a solution. In their words:
For the recent version of Vivaldi 2.10, 2.11, you need to create a shortcut, and modify the command line, append the "--disable-lcd-text" parameter behind the executable name, and MacType will work on the web page content window. The "--disable-features=RendererCodeIntegrity" parameter is recommended by snowie2000.
I used the latter method, but the type was still quite poor for me. I had to do one more thing: start Vivaldi in Windows 8 compatibility mode.
Itās messed up the top of the browser a little but itās a small price to pay to have everything readable again.
Snowie2000, the main dev for MacType, says a registry hack is their preferred workaround, at github.com/snowie2000/mactype/wiki/Google-Chrome#workaround-for-chrome-78.
It turns out that Chrome 78 (and presumably Chromium 78, too) did indeed have a change: āStarting from Chrome 78, Chrome began to block third-party DLLs from injection. But they provided a way to disable the protection either from the command line or by policy.ā
I was right to have investigated which version of Vivaldi represented the change earlier (it was 2.9, which equated to Chromium 78). After testing wmjordanās suggestions out on 2.9, I upgraded to 2.11, and it was still fine. Opera GX is still the more resolved browser (works as it should out of the box) but there are some aspects of Vivaldi that Iām familiar with after two-and-a-half years (to the day). Looks like Iāll be going back to it for my main browsing, but I know Iāve found another great browser along the way, and Iāve updated my Firefox, too.
That was confusing. Yesterdayās blog post was representative of my thinking: given that certain people were upset when Chromium took away the Directwrite toggle in 2016, and type rendering on Chromium-based Vivaldi deteriorated significantly for me with v. 2.10 (it turns out v. 2.9 was the turning-point), then did Chromium only switch fully to Directwrite for me earlier this year? Luckily I wrote a caveat: āThereās a possibility that what I saw from 2017 actually was Directwrite, and whatever theyāre using now is yet another technology that no one has made any note of.ā
Snowie2000, one of the developers of MacType, suggested I try Cent Browser, arguably the only Chromium browser that still has a Directwrite toggle: you could still disable it in favour of GDI.
Cent Browser by default is marginally better than what I was seeing on Edge, Vivaldi 2.10 and others, but once I turned Directwrite off, I saw a very different display, with far heavier type.
Cent Browser, Directwrite switched off
Cent Browser, default
Edge
It wasnāt what I expected to see, and without taking issue with those who support GDI rendering in Chromium, it lacked fidelity (at least for me) with what the type looked like in print. I can see clearly why it has its adherents: it is superior to the default. But, in other words, what I experienced on Vivaldi between 2007 and January 2020 was using Directwrite, and whatever is going on now is using something else, or ignoring other settings on my PC.
Yesterday I theorized that if the change happened between Chromium 77 and 78, then I should see that in the source browser. I installed a v. 77 from the repository. As you know, these are stand-alone and can run without a full installation. What I saw was the inferior rendering, so the āswitchā didnāt happen then. It may have happened, as I was told on the Vivaldi forums, with Chromium 69, something I am yet to confirm.
Therefore, whatever Chromium is doing isnāt something thatās been documented, to my knowledge, except for here. And Opera and Opera GX, if they are based on Chromium 79, seem not to be afflicted by this bug. Or they are interacting with other programs I have in order to keep the type rendering faithful, with decent hinting and contrast.
The question is: what is causing the far inferior type display on Chromium today?
PS.: Trials on Chromium 68 and 69āthey’re the same (i.e. poor type display). This may have gone on for quite some time.āJY
After considerable searching, the bug that I reported to Vivaldi, and which they cannot reproduce, appears to be one that the general public encountered back in 2016, when Chromium took away the option to disable its Directwrite rendering. I donāt know why Iāve only encountered it in 2020, and as far as I can tell, my experience is unique.
Itās a good position to be inānot unlike being one of two people (that I know of) who could upload videos of over one minute to Instagram without using IGTVāthough itās a mystery why things have worked properly for me and no one else.
When I switched to Vivaldi in 2017, I noticed how the type rendering was superior compared with Firefox, and it was only in January this year when it became far inferior for me. Looking at the threads opened on type rendering and Chromium, and the screenshots posted with them, most experienced something like this in 2016āa year before I had adopted Vivaldi. If my PC worked as theirs did, then I doubt I would have been talking about Vivaldiās superior display.
There’s a possibility that what I saw from 2017 actually was Directwrite, and whatever they’re using now is yet another technology that no one has made any note of.
Iāve posted in the Vivaldi and MacType forums where this has been discussed, as my set-up could provide the clue on why things have worked for me and not others. Could it be my font substitutions, or the changes Iāve made to the default display types in Windows? Or the fact that I still have some Postscript fonts installed from the old days? Or something so simple as my plug-ins?
Tonight I removed Vivaldi 2.11 and went to 2.6. I know 2.5 rendered type properlyāBembo on the Lucire website looks like Bembo in printāso I wondered if I could narrow down the precise version where Vivaldi began to fail on this front. (As explained earlier, after 2.5, no automatic updates came, and I jumped from 2.5 to 2.10.)
It was 2.9 where the bug began, namely when Vivaldi moved from a Chromium 77 base to a 78 one. This is different to what Ayespy, a moderator on the Vivaldi forums, experienced: version 69 was when they noted a shift. Yet Opera GX, which works fine, has a browser ID that claims itās Chrome/79.0.3945.130 (though I realize they can put whatever they like here). Brave, Chrome and Edge look awful.
We can conclude that not all Chromium browsers are created equally (goes without saying) but I understand that the rendering isnāt something that each company (Vivaldi, Opera, etc.) has fiddled with. Therefore, something Iām doing is allowing me to have better results on Opera, Opera GX and Vivaldi versions up to 2.8 inclusive.
I wonder if itās time to return to Firefox after an absence of two years and five months. After getting the new monitor, the higher res makes Firefoxās and Opera GXās text rendering fairly similar (though Chrome, Vivaldi and Edge remain oddly poor, and Vivaldiās tech people havenāt been able to replicate my bug). Thereās a part of me that gravitates toward Firefox more than anything with a Google connection, and I imagine many Kiwis like backing underdogs.
Here are some examples, bearing in mind Windows scales up to 125 per cent on QHD.
Vivaldi (Chrome renders like this, too)
Opera GX (and how Vivaldi used to render)
Firefox
Opera renders text slightly more widely than Firefox, but the subpixel rendering of both browsers is similar, though not identical. Type in Firefox arguably comes across with slightly less contrast than it should (especially for traditionally paper-based type, where I have a good idea of how itās āsupposedā to look) but Iām willing to experiment to see if I enjoy the switch back.
In those 29 months, a lot has happened, with Navigational Sounds having vanished as an extension, and I had to get a new Speed Dial (FVD Speed Dial) to put on my favourite sites. FVD uninstalled itself earlier today without any intervention from me, so if that recurs, Iāll be switching to something else. I donāt like computer programs having a will of their own.
A lot of my saved passwords no longer work, since I change them from time to time, and it was interesting to see what Firefox remembered from my last period of regular use. Iāll have to import some bookmarks, tooāthat file has been going between computers since Netscape.
The big problem of 2017āFirefox eating through memory like crazy (6 Gbyte in a short time)ācould be fixed now in 2020 by turning off hardware acceleration. Itās actually using less right now than Opera GX, and thatās another point in its favour.
I also like the Facebook Container that keeps any trackers from Zuck and co. away.
I did, however, have to get new extensions after having resided in the Vivaldi and Opera space for all that time, such as Privacy Badger.
If I make Firefox the default I know Iāll have truly switched back. But that Opera GX sure is a good looking browser. I might have to look for some skins to make common-garden Firefox look smarter.
The Dell P2418D: just like the one I’m looking at as I type, but there are way more wires coming out of the thing in real life
Other than at the beginning of my personal computing experience (the early 1980s, and thatās not counting video game consoles), Iāve tended to have a screen thatās better than average. When 640 Ć 360 was the norm, I had 1,024 Ć 768. My first modern laptop in 2001 (a Dell Inspiron) had 1,600 pixels across, even back then. It was only in recent years that I thought my LG 23-inch LCD, which did full HD, was good enough, and I didnāt bother going to the extremes of 4K. However, with Lucire and the night-time hours I often work, and because of a scratch to the LG that a friend accidentally made when we moved, I thought it was time for an upgrade.
Blue light is a problem, and I needed something that would be easier on the eyes. At the same time, an upgrade on res would be nice.
But there was one catch: I wasnāt prepared to go to 27 inches. I didnāt see the point. I can only focus on so much at any given time, and I didnāt want a monitor so large that Iād have to move my neck heaps to see every corner. On our work Imacs I was pretty happy to work at 24 inches, so I decided Iād do the same for Windows, going up a single inch from where I was. IPS would be fine. I didnāt need a curved screen because my livelihood is in flat media. Finally, I don’t need multiple screens as I don’t need to keep an eye on, say, emails coming in on one screen, or do coding where I need one screen for the code and the other for the preview.
Oddly, there arenāt many monitor manufacturers doing QHD at 24 inches. There was a very narrow range I could choose from in New Zealand, with neither BenQ nor Viewsonic doing that size and resolution here. Asus has a beautifully designed unit but I was put off by the backlight bleed stories of four years ago that were put down to poor quality control, and it seemed to be a case of hit and miss; while Dellās P2418D seemed just right, its negative reviews on Amazon and the Dell website largely penned by one person writing multiple entries. I placed the order late one night, and Ascent dispatched it the following day. If not for the courier missing me by an hour, Iād be writing this review a day earlier.
I realize weāre only hours in to my ownership so there are no strange pixels or noticeable backlight bleed, and assembly and installation were a breeze, other than Windows 10 blocking the installation of one driver (necessitating the use of an elevated command prompt to open the driver executable).
With my new PC that was made roughly this time last year, I had a Radeon RX580 video card with two Displayport ports, so it was an easy farewell to DVI-D. The new cables came with the monitor. A lot of you will already be used to monitors acting as USB hubs with a downstream cable plugged in, though that is new to me. It does mean, finally, I have a more comfortable location for one of my external HDs, and I may yet relocate the cable to a third external round the back of my PC.
Windows 10 automatically sized everything to 125 per cent magnification, with a few programs needing that to be overridden (right-click on the program icon, then head into āCompatibilityā, then āChange high DPI settingsā).
Dellās Display Manager lets you in to brightness, contrast and other settings without fiddling with the hardware buttons, which is very handy. I did have to dial down the brightness and contrast considerably: Iām currently at 45 and 64 per cent respectively.
And I know itās just me and not the devices but everything feels faster. Surely I can’t be noticing the 1 ms difference between Displayport and DVI-D?
I can foresee this being far more productive than my old set-up, and Ascentās price made it particularly tempting. I can already see more of the in- and outbox detail in Eudora. Plantin looks great here in WordPerfect (which I often prep my long-form writing in), and if type looks good, Iām more inclined to keep working with it. (It never looked quite right at a lower res, though it renders beautifully on my laptop.)
I feel a little more ālate 2010sā than I did before, with the monitor now up to the tech of the desktop PC. Sure, itās not as razor-sharp as an Imac with a Retina 4K display, but I was happy enough in work situations with the QHD of a 15-inch Macbook Pro, and having that slightly larger feels right. Besides, a 4K monitor at this sizeāand Dell makes oneāwas outside what I had budgeted, and Iām not sure if I want to run some of my programsāthe ones that donāt use Windowsā magnificationāon a 4K screen. Some of their menus would become particularly tiny, and that wonāt be great for productivity.
Maybe when 4K becomes the norm Iāll reconsider, as the programs will have advanced by then, though at this rate Iāll still be using Eudora 7.1, as I do today.
Surprisingly, Vivaldi hadnāt notified me of any updates for monthsāI was on v. 2.05, and had no idea that they were up to 2.10. Having upgraded manually, I noticed its handling of type had deteriorated. Here is one paragraph in Lucire:
My font settings had also changed.
Coincidentally, I downloaded Opera GX last night to have a go, and it displays type in the way Iām used to:
Since both are Chromium-based, and Opera is sensitive about privacy as Vivaldi is, I decided to make the change and see if I like the new browser better. I was used to Operas of old being independent, not Chromium-based, but the good news is I could use the same plug-ins.
Iām missing Vivaldiās easy screenshot process and its clipping (Opera GX has something similar but introduces an extra step of saving the file) but so far the browsers arenāt too different in terms of everyday functionality. Opera GXās extensionsā window isnāt as well organized and I have to scroll to tinker with the settings of anything later in the alphabet.
The unchangeable dark theme takes a bit of getting used to (but it matches my laptop, so thereās that), and thereās a GX home page thatās superfluous for me.
I donāt need the built-in ad blocker out of principle, but I do have certain anti-tracking plug-ins (e.g. Privacy Badger) that I was able to install from the Opera shop without incompatibility.
Hard-core gamers may like the CPU limiter and RAM limiter, to make sure the browser doesnāt eat up capacity for their games. Itās not something I need concern myself about, but I can see it being handy. I remember when old Chrome (many years ago) and Firefox (more recently) began eating memory like crazy with my settings (no idea why), and this would have been useful.
But as someone who reads online a lot, itās important that type is properly handled. I donāt know what Vivaldi has done to its type rendering, and thatās probably the biggest thing that tipped me in favour of change.
That #Brexit bill is typeset in Palatino. That was designed by a German. Come on, people, donāt you want to use British typefaces? Tell Johnny Foreigner what you think of his fonts!
Strictly speaking, I realize it was Book Antiqua, though as we all know, that’s a Palatino clone.
Since even English types like Baskerville were influenced by what was happening on the Continent, for official use, the UK really needs to go back to Old English. And yes, I realize that suggestion has unpleasant parallels to what was going on in Germany in the 1930s ā¦
There was a great follow-up to my Tweet, incidentally:
I need a "Tell Johnny Foreigner what you think of his fonts!" tee shirt, and I do not even wear clothes with writing on them.
Like many, I headed to the Kilbirnie mosque to pay my respects several times after March 15, but I would like the events of that day to be remembered beyond those that. I want our Muslim whÄnau here to know that I haven’t forgotten them, and here is my way of showing that.
I thought I could be archaic on a few thingsāI still use diphthongs in text in our publications (Ʀsthetic, CƦsar), the trio of inst., ult. and prox. in written correspondence, and even fuel economy occasionally in mpg (Imperial) because I am useless at ā/100 km and too few countries use km/ā. However, even I had to cringe at Jacob Rees-Moggās style guide as revealed by ITV. This has now been circulated to his House of Commons staff. It is not satire.
His first rule is āOrganisations are SINGULARā. (No, this isn’t licence to write ‘Organisations is singular.’) I donāt mind this as itās one I adopt myself (admittedly inconsistently), but note the spelling of the first word. Itās French. The correct spelling is organizations, and the switch to the French in the Anglosphere appears to have happened postwar. Go to English books that are old enough, and youāll find the z to be more commonplace. (Please donāt comment that z is āAmericanā before doing some research.)
His sixth rule is āDouble space after fullstopsā. Now, the last word should be two words, but the rule itself has even been abandoned by the newspaper that Rees-Moggās father edited for so many years. Most compositors in Britain abandoned large spaces at the start of the 20th century, by my reckoningāmy interpretation of the reading studies by Tinker et al is that the single space is sufficient, and web convention agrees. If we are to follow The Times in, say, 1969, we also need to insert spaces around certain other punctuation marks. If you find a copy from around that time, I can promise you it won’t be easy to read.
What is apparent to me is that the rules have been typed up, at least, by an amateur, which accounts for the poor spacing and inconsistent capitalization, and generally it shows a disregard for professional style guides (again, we return to The Times). Sometimes, the acorn does fall far from the tree.
I note that Imperial measurements are to be used again: none of this newfangled metric system nonsense. As I do some transactions in pounds sterling, I am going to refresh my memory on shillings, half-crowns and thruppenny bits in case currency decimalization is reversed. You never know, Johnson’s Britain may find the decimal system too Johnny Foreigner for its liking. ‘They cannot, and will not, change our sausage!’
Long before Mad Men, and before I got into branding in a big way, I had an interest in advertising. One of the greatest send-ups of the industry was the 1990 Dudley Moore starrer Crazy People, set in the advertising industry against a politically incorrectāactually, cruel and inaccurateālook at mental health. It’s one of those films that could never be made today, and for good reason. But there are some gems in it, as Moore’s character, Emory Leeson, embarks on “honest advertising”. It gets him committed to a facilityāwho ever heard of an advertising agency telling the truth, right?āuntil his ads become a hit, welcome by consumers who don’t want BS.
I came across this wonderfully copywritten and set ad from a PR professional in London trying to sell his Nan’s 1981 Volvo 244DL:
It’s bloody good. The copy kept me engagedālike all good ads used toāand he’s done a reasonably good job with the Volvo Broad headline typeface (it was wider back in the day). The body text type should be Times rather than Baskerville, but considering the exact cut of Times isn’t available digitally (to my knowledge; it’s for larger text, and has very short descenders), there’s no wonder he opted to use another family.
It got me thinking: I’ve often posted the Crazy People Volvo ad in comments, as a humorous response. However, the ad doesn’t exist in a decent res online. The only ones that have wound up online are from screen captures from the movie. This 22 kbyte file is actually the best one around, save for one on the Alamy stock photo website that I found after the fact:
I couldn’t re-create the imageāI assume the only person who has it (or had it) is the art director of the film, or the photographer that was commissionedābut maybe I could have a go at the type?
The digital Volvo Broad had to be widened 25 per cent, and I didn’t attempt to match the kerning.
The body type was the interesting one. I opted for Times Headline, since it wasn’t at a text size, but as I discovered, Volvo used a particular cut that had short descenders and was slightly condensed. I tried to match the leading.
Therefore, here it is, offered under Creative Commons with attribution to me for the typesetting, please, while noting the image is not mine:
