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It's a known issue that ClearType doesn't render text well when lcd monitors are rotated to portrait orientation. ClearType is primarily tuned for a vertically oriented RGB stripes (your average everyday LCD monitor in horizontal mode).

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It would be awesome if I could find a monitor built for portrait orientation. i.e. a monitor that has vertically oriented RGB stripes when in vertical orientation.

Does anyone have experience using a monitor like this?

I plan on it being a fourth monitor that is used primarily for reading. It will sit in portrait orientation permanently.

FYI, here's a great article on ClearType in Windows 7. I've highlighted some of the discussion in the comments sections on vertical mode rendering.

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    Good luck. The LCD panel manufacturers like to build for the greatest possible market, and that's vertical stripes on a landscape oriented screen. Aug 6, 2009 at 21:22
  • If I incline my head while ClearType is turned on I'm cupposed to se something horrible and non-antialiased :) ? Aug 8, 2009 at 15:03
  • Bolotov, no. But when your ClearType implementation renders glyphs on the assumption of an orientation other than yours, yes, it will look badly blurred and fringed in one direction, and too sharp in the other one. Feb 9, 2010 at 13:14
  • @MarkRansom That's true and that's why UMPCs and small convertibles from 2017 are likely to use smartphone displays with turned subpixels.
    – phk
    Jul 24, 2017 at 15:17

2 Answers 2

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You'd be after a specific technology to get that, and you'd pay a lot for such a non-TN monitor (>$1000).

A much easier solution would be to use the ClearType configuration tool - it is possible to tell ClearType to use alternate pixel arrangements (this is mostly for compatiblity with older LCDs, but also includes vertical arrangements last time I checked).

If you switch back and forth between portrait and landscape (which would make your special monitor useless) you could look into the registry changes needed to switch back and forth using a script (you could also script the change between portrait and landscape resolution).

EDIT: I'm trying to find the specific property page for this - I remember it as 4 boxes with different pixel layouts (2 vertical/2 horizontal). Hopefully it isn't my imagination that I've seen the vertical option in one of the ClearType tuners (there is the control panel, the power toy, the web thing)

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  • I don't think there's a ClearType configuration tool that is monitor specific. This monitor will be the forth in a four monitor setup and will always be in portrait orientation. I updated to the question to reflect its use.
    – GollyJer
    Aug 6, 2009 at 21:18
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    Is it possible that you saw the box on a linux system? GNOME offers this under System/Preferences/Appearance/Fonts/Details/Subpixel Order. It is not called Cleartype in GNOME of course. Aug 6, 2009 at 21:29
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    Even if there were a setting, unfortunately it still wouldn't be optimal. From the article linked in the question... "Ever since the first implementation of ClearType on the Windows CE platform we debated how to handle horizontal stripes. Vertical stripes work well with Latin based text systems because most of the high-frequency components need horizontal precision—exactly what we get with vertical stripes. Changing the ClearType algorithm to sample for horizontal stripes does not give us the same benefit, and artifacts like aliasing are very visible, especially in italic text."
    – GollyJer
    Aug 6, 2009 at 21:45
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If you use the Clear Type tuner, and pick a very modest RGB rendering scheme, PVA panels are perfect readable vertical without any issues. I run a Eizo 2031 vertical with clear type, and text is sharp and no colour fringing is visible. It was not by default, I had to pick another setting in the Clear type tuner.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/step1.aspx

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