“For those who are not familiar with the term, anti-aliasing is
a sleight-of-hand in which the jagged edges of curved letters and
numerals are rounded off, making them look more like real letters
and less like letters made from Lego blocks. This is done by
placing gray pixels in the places where the rounding ought to take
place and would if our screens were made up of something other than
pixels. The two magnified images here show the effects of
anti-aliasing and the alternative (what? aliasing?) on similar but
not identical typefaces. They’ll give you a sense of what I’m
talking about, anyway.”
“The whole process is reminiscent of the ‘Resolution
Enhancement’ employed by H-P in their LaserJet III series, in which
the size of the dots was varied, making an actual 300-dpi printer
seem like a 600-dpi one.”
“TrollTech’s inclusion of support for the anti-aliasing
extension in XFree86-4.02 and later, which is therefore made
available to KDE-2.x users, represents a considerable step for
Linux in my view. Windows and the Mac have long had this feature.
It’s the first time a full Linux desktop has offered it. (I feel
compelled to note that there are some people who find that
anti-aliasing makes letters look fuzzy. They don’t like the effect.
It can be turned off in Windows, and on the Mac, and, yes, in KDE.
My bet is that most people who try it will never look back. Take a
look at the other screenshots here, and you’ll see what I
mean.)”
“So. How can you bring this marvel to your very own
desktop?”