World's tiniest font

    Actually, on a LCD screen if for example you draw 3 pixels at the same position : one pure red, one pure green and one pure blue on a black background, you'll see that the red will be drawn a bit more on the left, the green in the middle and the blue on the right.

    So if you draw one red pixel and a blue pixel next to the red on the right, you'll see a black pixel in the middle at a 100 % zoom, and that's also why you see what seems to be a curve when i've only drawn 2 lines.

    This is totally useless shit, but it amused me for a while.

    It is actually completely readable if you move closer to the screen. It's quite an interesting trick.

    First one says "HELLO MAPCORIANS LOL" and the second says "ALSO SENTURA FUCK YOU!".

    ClearType in Windows and Vista uses the same technology to make fonts look smoother, albeit approached much more subtly.

    Completely readable if you ask me, I didn't have any problems. Are those of you with trouble reading it using CRT monitors? I'm guessing from the "...and LCD screen horizontal deformation" that under such circumstances it might not work too well.

    Yeah i've got an LCD but it still is pretty unreadable for me? I mean I could make out what it said but it took some squinting and guessing at a few letters. TBH the ones that are most easily readable are the ones that are all red, like the S, F, and C.

    Seriously, its not readable. maybe some of the letters and then you can try to guess what it means. But i wouldnt actualy call that reading.

    Maybe it needs a very old LCD to work.

    If it were totally unreadable without an old LCD then how did I both read it and read it on a 24-inch Dell from 2006?

    I suspect issues that may make it difficult to read are:

    a) Not being close enough to the screen

    b) Your monitor having a very small dot pitch which means it's going to be harder to see the 1/3-pixel difference required to read the font

    To quickly explain to those who still don't get it, LCD monitors generally arrange each pixel like this:

    |||

    RGB. Except without any gaps, obviously. They mix together to create individual colours by using different levels of the three colours.

    This means that if you display pure red in one pixel on an LCD, it actually displays in the first third of that pixel. What Koko has done is exploit this to make it look like there's three times as much resolution per pixel, effectively splitting each pixel into three very thin pixels.

    Weird stuff, but totally true. The process is called sub-pixel rendering, and Windows ClearType (enabled by default in Vista, it's the thing that makes your fonts look smooth) uses a weaker variation of the technique to try and give the perceptions of fonts having more resolution.

    Unfortunately to some people including me it's quite possible to pick up on these colours and they become very distracting. If you use ClearType (right click desktop -> Properties -> Appearance -> Effects -> Smooth Edges) and can't see the colour outlines, zoom in using Photoshop or something.

    A fascinating lesson!!

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