Re: PNG vs. sub-pixel rendering PARTIAL SOLUTION!

On Fri, Jul 10, 2026 at 00:37 (+0200), Hans Hagen via ntg-context wrote:

> On 7/9/2026 9:30 PM, Jim Diamond via ntg-context wrote:

>> I would have guessed it was just a "me" problem with my archaic AR, but the
>> unnamed person running Windows has (I presume) an up-to-date,
>> as-good-as-it-gets version.  So I'm not sure (older) applies here.

> i actually don't know how old my acrobat is ... once it started offering to
> make summaries of a pdf and/or do watever it likes with it i stopped
> starting it up

Maybe you can find an old version that doesn't do things like that, but not
necessarily as old as this one:

>> Maybe here: https://winworldpc.com/product/acrobat-reader/1

> oh, soo small ...

Go on, give it a try.  I know you want to.  :-)


>> The few times I bothered doing a comparison, AR rendered thin lines better
>> than anything I put it up against.  Another reason for me to keep using
>> this archaic program.

> so what is your screen resolution, 640x480 ?

**sigh** so many people talk about the number of pixels and not the pixel
density.  640x480 would look very sharp indeed on a 5cm x 3cm screen.

>> My screen is about 141 DPI.  Not super high-res, but a whole lot better
>> than those "crimes against humanity" 96 DPI screens.

> interesting is that 1920x1200 often (on windows) looks quite ok (but
> depending on where i dock the laptop I have upto 4K so various resolutions
> and sizes, these (even older) monitors run forever)

How big is that screen?  12"?  17.3"?

Most non-SPR'ed text looks "fine" on my (1920x1080) screen.  But even at
141 DPI, SPR'ed text looks noticeably better to me.

And, for reasons I don't understand (and maybe never will), Pagella looks
awful in my ancient AR when it is not SPR'ed.  Really awful.  7x13 X fonts
from 1985 look better.  Recently someone (another person who may not want
his name connected to this thread) asked me about using Pagella for
ANSS-CE.  I could not understand why anyone would want that, because it
looked so bad.  But then I realized it looked bad in my AR when the page
wasn't SPR'ed.

>> In the most ideal world, ConTeXt would somehow trap evil images inside
>> their own little sandbox, and not let their bad parts corrupt the rest of
>> the document.  However, in the world we live in, that may not be possible.
>> So I have no reason to think ConTeXt is misbehaving.

> You can always force a good old 320 horizontal pixel resolution experience:

> \startMPpage
> triplet bm ; bm := loadbytemapfromfile(3, "PageLayout.png") ;

> lmt_filter [
> source = 3,
> target = 4,
>       % filter = "sharpen:5",
>       % filter = "gaussianblur",
>       % filter = "sharpen:5,gaussianblur",
> filter = "gaussianblur,sharpen:5",
>     ] ;

> draw bytemap 4 xsized 20mm ;
> \stopMPpage

> (and then spend an evening writing your own filters that you can plug in)

I can't possible imagine why I would ever want to, and yet I'll keep this
message just in case that day comes.

                                Jim

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