[OS X TeX] Skim font smoothing problem with Yosemite

[Richard Seguin]

> On Oct 24, 2014, at 11:57 AM, Herbert Schulz <herbs at wideopenwest.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Oct 24, 2014, at 11:30 AM, Richard Seguin <riseguin at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> 
>> It’s suggested on these web pages that Skim’s font smoothing looks terrible relative to other viewers under Yosemite because it is no longer using “sub pixel rendering”. Does anyone have an idea what this means at the coding level for this latest OS? TeXShop developers: is TeXShop using “sub pixel rendering”?
>> 
>> http://superuser.com/questions/829302/pdf-font-renderings-in-yosemite
>> 
>> https://twitter.com/makotokanazawa/status/524481913558298624
>> 
>> Richard Séguin
> 
> Howdy,
> 
> As a side note, the TeX Preview window (I'm quite sure it also uses PDFKit) looks horrendous too.
> 
> Also, Monaco is unusable in BBEdit 11 but looks fine as the Source Window font in TeXShop.
> 
> Good Luck,
> 
> Herb Schulz

On my non-retina display, TeXShop doesn’t reveal any more detail than Skim, but it’s more pleasant to look at. Skim looks rather harsh and ugly in contrast and is unpleasant to read.

As for Monaco, this from  http://barebones.com/support/bbedit/current_notes.html  

	"Antialiasing is now turned off for Monaco when used in editing views; this restores the legacy (and more legible) appearance on non-retina displays.”

I’m using the proportional font Georgia in BBEdit, and it looks fine. (Georgia works well for LaTeX and math since the (, [, and { characters are thick, easy to see, and well spaced.)

Richard Séguin