Comments on: Finally! Font Smoothing Over RDP/ICA on Server 2003

By: Dan Dar3

Dan Dar3 — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:56:53 +0000

I\’d say the main reason is that most users don\’t know about the feature although it might be enabled by default on their desktops (i\’m talking about standard Font Smoothing not necessarily ClearType) and second is it\’s because most TS / Citrix admins consider it unecessary / adverse effects on network bandwith (this is what I got from my IT team) and they want to avoid potential problems. I\’d say this should always be there and somehow disable it in the RDP/Citrix client if the network latency is too high, rather than just have it disabled for all, but maybe that\’s just me, being a user and developer…

By: Recent Links Tagged With "rdp" - JabberTags

Recent Links Tagged With "rdp" - JabberTags — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:34:37 +0000

[...] public links >> rdp RDP Client for iPhone Saved by fuzzball334 on Thu 09-10-2008 Finally! Font Smoothing Over RDP/ICA on Server 2003 Saved by jezcat123 on Wed 08-10-2008 Findout who is logged on to a server Saved by herrsergio on [...]

By: Helge Klein » Blog Archive » How to Configure Font Smoothing on Presentation Server and XenApp

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:43:07 +0000

[...] the release of the hotfixes KB946633 and PSE450R02W2K3037 ClearType font smoothing is finally available on both the current and the upcoming Citrix flagship products Presentation Server 4.5 and XenApp [...]

By: Helge

Helge — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:46:07 +0000

Spoonman,

I agree: the main reason ClearType font smoothing was disabled was probably that MS thought that LCD screens were not widely used yet. At least I cannot think of any other reason. However, around 2005 I worked in a relatively large (though not as large as yours) project upgrading existing farms to PS 4 and at the same time replacing fat clients + CRTs with thin clients + LCDs. I must say the customer was quite disappointed when I told him that ClearType just does not work.

By: Spoonman

Spoonman — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:22:48 +0000

Well, I wouldn’t say it was one of the MOST important features. In 8 years of being a Citrix administrator, I’ve only recently just received my request to enable it ever (ironically, the day before the patch was released, so I almost lied when I told them it wasn’t possible). We have over 14,000 users on our farm, and at my previous employer we had over 9,000. I’m sure if it was a real issue, someone would’ve noticed it before now. The only reason it’s become an issue for us now is we’re releasing a new version of our in-house written application that we are now providing to our customers via Citrix and so Sales is involved. :)

I would think the main reason they disabled it was because not everyone’s using flat panels yet. IMO, anti-aliased fonts look worse on CRTs, so by enabling it for your Citrix-hosted apps, you’d be doing your users a disservice. And, as you pointed out in another article, there is a slight performance hit on bandwidth. I wonder how much of a difference it makes processor-wise, too? I guess we’ll find out once we enable it on our 150 user machines. :)

Thanks for the info!

By: Dan Crevier's Blog : Font Smoothing with Remote Desktop and Windows Server 2003

Dan Crevier's Blog : Font Smoothing with Remote Desktop and Windows Server 2003 — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:42:58 +0000

[...] Helge Klein » Blog Archive » Finally! Font Smoothing Over RDP/ICA on Server 2003 Published Friday, July 11, 2008 8:42 PM by dancre [...]