MathTime™ Quality Comparison

You should be able to easily tell which line is which!

Which one would you rather see on your screen?

Look in particular for (in order from top to bottom):

• mismatch in thickness of horizontal strokes in "element" and "owner" (2nd and 3rd symbol in first row);
• mismatch in thickness of strokes in left and right "floor" and "ceiling" (middle of first row);
• advance width of left brace "{" greater than right brace "}";
• "turnstileleft" sticking out into next character ("club" here);
• advance widths too small in the four "circle" operators (*);
• inconsistent slant in Greek letters in math italic;
• uneven "color" of lower case Greek letters;
• weak vertical stroke in "psi";
• "upsilon" looks the same as the letter "v";
• vertical misalignment between left and right paren in math italic;
• advance width too large in italic "Gamma" (*);
• unequal counters (open areas) in slanted and upright "Phi";
• uneven strokes in italic "Omega";
• uneven vertical strokes in the letter "w";
• advance widths too small in "flat", "natural", and "sharp" (*);
• shifted bottom stroke in upright "Xi";
• and so on...

(*) "Incorrect advance width here refers to differences between the character width specified in the TFM metric file versus the actual glyph program).

Some Notes:

In this illustration font smoothing was turned on (which is why the GIF image can't be bi-level, but has 256 levels of gray). Things look even more ragged without font smoothing (font smoothing can mask some of the problems with poorly hinted fonts).

These samples were enlarged on screen by 20%. Rendering deteriorates even more when the magnification is lower.

The math extension is the easiest to render because it has the thickest strokes, and there are no delicate details at the ends of stems.