How can I use system anti-aliasing in Fireworks CS5?

Question

Fireworks used to have System Anti-Alias in the options, why is it not there anymore? Does anyone have a solution for it?

I found these interesting links but no solution

• The Ails Of Typographic Anti-Aliasing
• How Adobe ruined Fireworks CS4/CS5

And the only one with a partial solution (but not working fine for me)

• Simulate ClearType Text in Adobe Fireworks

Answer 1

As a heavy user of all latest Fireworks versions I couldn't find this feature up to current CS6 version. I think it has something to do with the fact that ClearType is a patented Microsoft technology.

In addition to your links, this thread on Adobe forum has some tips how to simulate system anti-aliasing in Fireworks. You can tune Fireworks styles to match system anti-aliasing by hand, but you can not make it look exactly the same, because:

1) ClearType is more than only anti-aliasing. ClearType has a sub-pixel rendering feature that makes vector lines of the font look more aligned to the pixel grid. Fireworks doesn't do this.

2) The sub-pixel rendering also differs per rendering engine that is used, for example: GDI and DirectWrite on Windows

Both use ClearType in the above image.

3) The anti-aliasing properties of ClearType are dynamic (configurable) and vary from system to system. You can change how ClearType looks within your Windows OS.