MaplePrimes - answers and comments on Question, Maple 14 font differences?

The difference is due to antialiasing

AndrewS — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 17:16:06 Z

Hi Christopher,

Both Maple 13 and 14 are actually using the same fonts. The difference is in the interpretation of "Default" for the Font Antialiasing setting in the Options panel. In Maple 13 and earlier, a setting of "Default" meant "Disabled" for most cases (the main exception being Chinese and Japanese versions of Maple, where font antialiasing is needed to render the characters legibly). For Maple 14, we've enabled font antialiasing as the default for a much wider range of systems.

Why the change? The font antialiasing algorithm used by releases of the Java runtime that were available when we shipped previous versions of Maple had some weaknesses. Among the most egregious of these was that the diagonal stroke would disappear from the italic letter "z" or upright numeral "2" when rendered at certain point sizes -- clearly not an acceptable situation for mathematical software! Fortunately, most of the problems have been resolved in the Java runtime that's distributed with Maple 14, so we're finally able to enable font antialiasing as the default configuration.

italics ?

Axel Vogt — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:02:21 Z

In Maple 12 (or up to that?) I always have the issue with the 'Standard', that output is in Italics = cursive (terrible to read), using Maple 12 on WIN XP SP2.

And failed to deactivate for the output (but have to set all to Italic, and after that all to non-italic). After saving and re-opening all was lost and reset.

Is that solved in Maple 14?

Font antialiasing issues

Alejandro Jakubi — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:35:28 Z

Andrew,

It is good to know this information. I do not see it in ?updates,Maple14,GUI (is it documented elsewhere?).

Now, by setting Maple 13.02 or 14 Standard GUI to Font anti-aliasing: Disabled (under Win XP 32), and executing:

seq(Typesetting:-mi("z",fontstyle = "italic",size=i),i=8..24);

I get all the diagonal strokes complete. So, could you tell me at what point sizes do they disappear?

Indeed, I get much worst rendering with Font anti-aliasing: Enabled.

Hello, Alejandro, The "missing strokes"

AndrewS — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:24:31 Z

Hello, Alejandro,

The "missing strokes" problem actually appears when antialiasing is enabled (sorry if that wasn't clear in my original response), and happens at a variety of font sizes including the default size of 12pt.

For example, here is a screen image of your example in Maple 13 running on Windows 7 with antialiasing enabled:

Here's the same example running in Maple 14 on the same system:

italics ??

Axel Vogt — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:51:19 Z

No answer? Thus that problem is still present I guess.

Style sets

Alejandro Jakubi — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:30:09 Z

@Axel Vogt

I use a customized style set mw file in Standard GUI: Format > Manage Style Sets > User-defined Style Set. May be you need to create one?