CrossOver Support - Community Forums

Is it at all possible with CX mac to turn on cleartype functionality? I find that often times fonts look kinda rough compared to the same program running on windows. I guess this must be partly due to lack of cleartype? Secondly, I am wondering if there is a way for me to override the fonts that are included with Wine with the real fonts from my windows installation, and if I did would that make any difference in the rendering on screen?

Sadly, CX doesn't support cleartype functionality.

As far as the fonts themselves go, the real fonts from your windows installation are being used by Crossover - there aren't substitute fonts in the winfeconfig. I wonder what your Font Smoothing Style is set at on your Mac? Does messing around this make any difference on the "roughness" of your fonts?

Nah. My mac fonts all look beautiful. its only apps running inside wine. The fonts look even rougher than they do when running on a PC under windows. Something is less than optimal there.

interesting. which apps are you running?

Jack Phinney wrote:

interesting. which apps are you running?

All apps have the rough look. But one app in particular where it matters more to me is a music notation program called Overture. All fonts inside that application, including the music fonts, have a much rougher appearance then they do under windows. There is quite obviously something different about the way wine renders fonts.

The lack of cleartype certainly has an effect on fonts, some more than others, and in some apps more than others. For most users it isn't too much of a problem, but for others it is, especially depending on the apps they use and the line of work they are in. This is, regrettably, a limitation of the configuration of Wine within Crossover.

If you haven't already, you can install corefonts from your "install windows software" menu in Crossover (you'll need to unhide service packs and dependencies in Crossover Preferences to do so) and see if that does anything.

Also, I'm curious to see the effects on this "Overture". Are you referring to Overture 4.01 for windows? i'd like to find a demo of the same program and install it on my test mac to see what you're talking about with this app.

Thanks.

Overture is up to version 4.1 patch 16 by now, but yes, that is the one. Everything seems to work, so far, but only the fonts look a bit rough, including standard ones like courier new, etc. I really think this is about the way Wine handles TrueType fonts. Anyway, I'll try to take some screen captures later.

Steve Schow wrote:

Overture is up to version 4.1 patch 16 by now, but yes, that is the
one. Everything seems to work, so far, but only the fonts look a
bit rough, including standard ones like courier new, etc. I really
think this is about the way Wine handles TrueType fonts. Anyway,
I'll try to take some screen captures later.

This is very much related to the "inconvenience" I am having with Cakewalk, versions 7 & 8 (Home Studio and Express, respectively). On application startup, I get an error stating the symbol font could not be found. In the staff view (view for editing the notes on the staff), the musical notes are quite distorted, and difficult to edit, or input.

Recognizing this is an otherwise unsupported program, I am very pleased with how well Cakewalk does perform under Crossover, overall. I would very much like to correct this one area of difficulty, however. I will try the suggestion to "install windows software" to install the fonts I've copied into the fonts folder (when my MBP comes back from the shop next week: unrelated display trouble).

Thank you for the thread and the responses.

Stephen

You may want to check out the articles in our Support Library regarding fonts, they may improve the look of the applications you are running:

http://www.codeweavers.com/support/wiki/cxoffice_othernoaliasing
http://www.codeweavers.com/support/wiki/cxoffice_othernomachine
http://www.codeweavers.com/support/wiki/cxoffice_otherpostscriptfonts

Further, if you have a licensed copy of Windows you can add the Symbol font to your font library.

I think its related to Font Smoothing Style. When I first installed CrossOver, the fonts looked horrible using Core. All the fonts were being rendered binary (black or white) with no smoothing at all.
I then went to System Prefrences -> Appearance and changed the Font Smoothing Style, now they are anti-aliased.
Whats odd is now when I change the Font Smoothing Style back to the same as it was before, they are still anti-aliased under Windows apps.

My guess is that something isn't set until the first time you change the Font Smoothing Style? So whatever reads that parameter defaults to aliased until its been changed and saved at least once?

But to anyone with ugly fonts, try changing that parameter and saving the setting, it seemed to work for me...