AAText makes Workbench and applications draw TrueType fonts antialiased
on RTG screens (15/16/24/32 bit): icon labels, menus, window and screen
titles, Shell windows, GadTools, ReAction and MUI programs - everything
that draws text through graphics.library.
No setup needed: every TrueType or OpenType font installed with a font manager
(fonts with a .otag file) is detected automatically and drawn smoothly
in every size, using the code page from its .otag file (Turkish,
Central European etc. work out of the box). Bitmap fonts are left
untouched; AGA screens too, unless the experimental "aga on" is set.
Features
- Subpixel (LCD) antialiasing ("subpixel rgb|bgr") for flat panels that
show the screen 1:1: sharper letters with slightly coloured edges
- Experimental antialiasing on palette (AGA) screens ("aga on"): letter
edges in the palette colours nearest to the mix; needs shades such as
the MagicWB greys. Also runs without RTG, on palette screens only
- Zero configuration; optional ENVARC:AAText.prefs for gamma, hinting
(none/light/normal/full), glyph cache size, program blacklist and
explicit font mappings
- Preferences program AATextPrefs (English and Turkish, ReAction): a
running AAText takes every change at once, so you see it while you
try it; Save/Use/Cancel and the usual Prefs menus
- Character sets for fonts without a code page: Latin-1 to Latin-5,
Latin-9, Latin-10, Windows-1250, ISO-8859-5 (Cyrillic) and KOI8-R;
AATextPrefs keeps ENV:ftcodepage (freetype2.library) in step
- Font diagnostics in AATextManager: finds .otag files that point to a
missing or moved font file (e.g. after the boot volume was renamed)
and can delete fonts (with or without the font file)
- Font installer AATextManager (window and Shell, English and
Turkish): installs TrueType/OpenType fonts like FTManager, but with
the code page of a character set in the .otag and a path without
volume name, with a preview before installing; repairs installed
fonts (moved file, no code page, engine freetype2 -> aatext). Needs
aatext.library (included); "Check for updates" downloads a newer
release to RAM: (needs TCP/IP and AmiSSL 5)
- "Safe" metrics by default: letters keep the cells of the system's
bitmap font, so no window layout changes
- Optional real metrics mode ("real on"): the TrueType font's own
character widths and pair kerning, with TextLength/TextExtent/TextFit
kept consistent; bold, italic and underline styles supported
- Does not replace any library: patches Text(), TextLength(),
TextExtent() and TextFit() at run time and removes them cleanly;
start it a second time (or "AAText QUIT") to switch it off
- Fonts are rendered on AAText's own stack, so tasks with small stacks
(input.device, Shell commands) are safe
- Versions for 68020-68040/Emu68/WinUAE and for 68060 with FPU, plus a
debug version for bug reports
Tested on AmigaOS 3.2.3 with WinUAE (UAEGFX) and PiStorm (Emu68),
Picasso96.
Installation: double-click Install-AAText (the OS 3.2 Installer; it
can also remove AAText again). By hand: copy AAText to C: and add "Run >NIL: C:AAText" to
S:Startup-Sequence, after the monitor drivers and before LoadWB (not
WBStartup); copy AATextPrefs and its icon to SYS:Prefs for the
preferences program, AATextManager and its icon to SYS:System and
Libs/aatext.library to LIBS: for the font installer. See AAText_EN.txt
(English) or AAText_TR.txt (Turkish, ISO-8859-9) for details.
License: MIT (free for any use, commercial or not; keep the copyright
notice). Source code and bug reports: https://github.com/Sdursun/AAText
The TextExtent/TextFit code of the real metrics mode is derived from
AROS, Copyright (C) 1995-2026 The AROS Development Team, and its source
(src/metrics.c) is available there under the AROS Public License 1.1.
This software is based in part on the work of the FreeType Team.
Portions of this software are copyright (C) 2026 The FreeType Project
(https://freetype.org). All rights reserved.
aatext.library: FreeType 2.14.3 as a shared library, see
LICENSE.aatext.txt and FTL.txt.
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