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 or
MUI 3.8+, chosen in the installer): 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), KOI8-R and
Amiga-E2 (Czech, Slovak);
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
For AmigaOS 3.x. Tested on AmigaOS 3.2.3 with WinUAE (UAEGFX) and
PiStorm (Emu68), Picasso96. With the MUI user interface it is meant
to run on AmigaOS 3.1, 3.5 and 3.9 too, but these have NOT been
tested yet; the ReAction GUIs need 3.2, use the MUI ones there.
Please report your results: https://github.com/Sdursun/AAText/issues
Changes since 0.34
- 0.45: text is antialiased on the first draw: the Font prefs preview
of a font not used before, the title bar of a new screen, and YAM's
message text (TextEditor.mcc) were drawn in the bitmap font.
- 0.44: aatext.library 1.1: fonts installed with AATextManager no
longer crash or freeze programs with a 16 KB stack (e.g. the
Directory Opus 5 font requester). The ReAction programs draw
correctly when ReAction prefs use smart refresh.
- 0.43: the Amiga-E2 entry of the character set lists had no name in
the English user interface.
- 0.42: Amiga-E2 character set (Czech, Slovak). Fixes: AATextPrefs MUI
runs with diskfont.library 39 (OS 3.1); underlined key letters in
MUI labels are antialiased; text that a program draws again on
itself (MagicMenu highlights) no longer gets bolder; accents of
capitals are no longer cut off; the installer works when
the archive was unpacked by another program (catalog drawer name).
- 0.41: MUI user interface for AATextPrefs and AATextManager (MUI 3.8
or newer); the installer asks for ReAction or MUI. About and Help
menus (Help shows the document in the window's language). .otf
files go to FONTS:_otf/, .ttc/.otc to FONTS:_ttc/ by default. Files
for translators (.cd/.ct) in Catalogs/Translations.
- 0.40: font mappings change while AAText runs, without a restart.
- 0.39: AATextPrefs "Font mappings" tab: draw a bitmap font (e.g. the
Shell's) with a TrueType font, chosen with requesters, with preview.
- 0.38: text MUI programs draw into hidden buffers (string gadgets,
labels, e.g. LumiFTP) is antialiased without "offscreen on".
- 0.37: "fontmem" limit (default 8 MB): unused font files are freed
and loaded again when needed; no fixed limits on files and sizes.
- 0.36: code review fixes (damaged .otag, fonts installed while AAText
runs found without a restart, palette screens with subpixel on);
faster long lines, palette screens and previews.
- 0.35: AATextManager: each tab shows its own preview; a font file
added twice is listed once; wide windows show whole preview lines.
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
(the MUI drawer holds both programs for MUI 3.8 or newer). 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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