ZoomText - Font smoothing levels and expectations

ZoomText - Font smoothing levels and expectations

Problem

A ZoomText customer may experience problems with the quality of fonts and font smoothing with various apps in Windows. 


Resolution

When using magnification software with higher magnification powers imperfections and artefacts may be see in the rendering of on screen fonts. 
Notes
Update
16/02/2024:  Freedom Scientific has released December update for ZoomText 2024 which includes updated font smoothing support for Microsoft Office 365.  Visit  www.freedomscientific.com and check under Download for ZoomText.


Types of font smoothing

ZoomText uses two different font smoothing technology within their software.  These are Geometric smoothing and xFont font smoothing described below in more detail:
  1. Geometric smoothing is a medium quality smoothing algorithm that is reasonably effectively and appliccable throughout most applications and Windows operating system and comes only a small system overhead.  Some artefacts may still b  visible, especially at higher magnification powers. 
  2. xFont is a higher quality font smoothing technology that has to be supported by the application being used.  This technology is available in Microsoft Office 365 applications with version 2307 and above.  This type of font smoothing will stand up well at higher magnification powers where the application is supported (only Microsoft Office 365 apps currently).  The developers anticipate rolling out similar quality font smoothing with other applications where they can work with the developer to support xFont.


Font smoothing issues by ZoomText version

  1. Prior to version 2024 the xFont technology was disabled by default in 2022 due to a mixture of performance concerns and declining number of application with which it would work.
  2. Windows employs its own built in font smoothing techniques which may conflict with the technologies used by ZoomText although some experimentation may help on specific systems. 



Warning
Warning
  1. Font smoothing of xFont or geometric type are not available when using magnification factors below 2x.
  2. xFont is not available when using Remote Access.


Font Smoothing Examples

To help with understand the different levels of font smoothing below are shown examples of what is expected in each font smoothing scenario.

  1. In the example below it should be very clear that the edges of the font is shown with jagged appearance, no font smoothing is taking place.

  2. The next example shows geometric smoothing being applied by ZoomText.



  3. The final example shows the quality expected with xFont smoothing, ZoomText version 2024 again now offers this quality when used with a fully updated Microsoft 365 installation.




Notes
Tip
Customers with earlier versions of Office or are on 2023 and below who wish to see the quality of xFont potential can launch Windows Notepad and enter or copy/paste text to view xFont.

    • Related Articles

    • ZoomText - Font Smoothing problems and development road map

      Problem ZoomText/Fusion customers may face problems with the quality of font smoothing in ZoomText. These may still present with older versions of Microsoft Office and with the current main web browsers. Detailed below is the position with respect to ...

    • Disabling xFont to troubleshoot Zoomtext issues

      Problem You have a problem with ZoomText font smoothing which may be causing an application to crash or behave unexpectedly. Resolution To help resolve this issue it may be necessary to strategically disable the ZoomText font smoothing option to ...

    • ZoomText - Loss of font smoothing moving from Internet Explorer

      Problem If a customer used to font smoothing in Internet Explorer moves to using Microsoft Edge or Chrome they will notice some drop in font smoothing quality in the new browser. Applies to ZoomText Fusion Note This article discusses ongoing issues ...

    • ZoomText/Fusion – Enable the new xFont smoothing in version 2024

      Problem A ZoomText/Fusion 2024 customer experiences poor font smoothing in Microsoft Office applications. Resolution From version 2024.2312 ZoomText/Fusion has newly refactored magnification engine that supports better font smoothing, to enable this ...

    • ZoomText - Font smoothing enhancements disappear during scrolling

      Problem When scrolling text in a window such as a long email the ZoomText font smoothing momentarily disappears during text scrolling activity and is only restored shortly after text has topped scrolling which is noticeable to the end user. Affected ...