Maybe people understand different things by the name "subpixel
rendering". In Agg, subpixel rendering means antialiasing like this:
http://www.antigrain.com/screenshots/agg1_01.jpg
In Cairo, I'm guessing (since the OP mentioned Microsoft's ClearType)
that "subpixel rendering" means utilizing the RGB subpixels on LCD
monitors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType
A potential problem is that different people have different displays; at
least when configuring CoolType in Adobe Reader, you have a range of
options to select from. I imagine that Cairo has a similar global
setting, and in my opinion Matplotlib should simply respect that setting
when rendering on screen. File output is more complicated: what if the
file is viewed on a different kind of display than it was generated on?
···
--
Jouni K. Sepp�nen
http://www.iki.fi/jks