Turn off cleartype/font-smoothing and panning @ Win CE 7

Question

Hi I got a lil problem with a mobile handheld computer (Motorola MC9200) running Windows CE 7.0.

Within the browser (Internet Explorer + software like Naurtech CETerm) there is some font-smoothing or cleartype. Problem about that is that , and font with a css style of font-weight 900 for example look exactly the same as normal font. So you can't tell the difference.

Another problem would be the panning. I'm running a fullscreen web application and the user shouldn't be able to pan the whole screen 1 cm out. Funny thing is while the user is panning the whole picture the font-smoothing/cleartype is disabled and you can tell the difference between font-weights.

Anyone no a solution to that? I already searched the registry for cleartype and font but didn't find anything helpful. I don't have other WinCE 7.0 devices so I don't know if that problem is WinCE 7.0 related or related to the device.

Answer 1

I don't have a device at hand, but WEC 7.0 offers the SystemParametersInfo function that sounds a bit like what you're after.

Call it with uiAction set to SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHING to disable ClearType on a system-wide basis:

SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHING, FALSE, NULL, SPIF_SENDCHANGE);

Earlier versions of Windows CE had a registry setting to allow OEM's to disable ClearType, but I've been unable to locate this setting in WEC 7.0, so my guess is it's no longer supported and ClearType is always enabled by default.