Not so ClearType

I looked at a link from Zeldman this morning on Web typography. Through it I discovered a few interesting things about aliased and anti-aliased fonts. I also discovered Windows (XP at least) offers ClearType.

Using an obscure setting in the Control panel you can set your screen fonts to render in ClearType. From what I can gather this is sub pixel anti-aliasing and it makes every font on the screen look nice and smooth. A bit like a printed page and a lot like text in pdf's. I have no idea how they achieve this feat of technical wizardry but it does transform the look of your whole system.

Trouble is, it is hard to read.

My eyesight isn't great. I don't wear glasses, but it is not all that good, so this may be just me. When I turned on ClearType my first reaction was "beautiful" followed shortly after by "Gee - it's kinda hard to read". ClearType seemed to get rid of any black in the font and replace it with grey. I seem to need that extra contrast to help legibility, especially at small font faces.

Word is some new form of ClearType will ship in the new Windows OS (Longhorn?). Looks like I'm going to need glasses.