Microsoft Corp has its eye on the emerging market for electronic books, and part of Bill Gates’ opening speech at Comdex on Sunday demonstrated new font technology designed to make screens easier to read. Microsoft ClearType, an initiative from the Microsoft Research Labs, is claimed to improve font sharpness by up to 300% when compared to existing LCD displays currently used in laptops, handheld and palm-sized PCs. Microsoft’s chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold – presumably keen to bolster Microsoft innovations in order to counteract the negative coverage from the Washington trial – said that ClearType had achieved astounding results that hadn’t been expected for perhaps another five years. It works on existing displays with out new hardware, he said. ClearType capitalizes on the properties of LCD displays – which at Comdex were increasingly in evidence for new flat panel desktop displays – using proprietary signal techniques beyond conventional techniques such as anti-aliasing, and making letter shapes and character spacing more comparable to printed fonts. It works at the operating system layer, so can be used to improve existing applications as well as new ones, said Microsoft – though only on Windows-based operating systems, ranging from Windows CE to NT. No release date or details of products to include the new technology, were announced. Back in October, Microsoft got together with a dozen publishing companies and electronic book makers to begin establishing a set of open, technical standards for eBooks. The main aim is to establish a common file specification, so that titles can be read on any machine adhering to the standards. The specification is to be based on HTML and XML. Microsoft predicted some 50,000 eBook titles would be available by 2001.
