SmoothType is a shareware ($10) control panel that brings Mac OS X style font smoothing to Macs running System 7 through Mac OS 9.1. SmoothType also works in the Classic environment under Mac OS X, giving Classic applications text that looks just as good as in Carbon and Cocoa applications.
SmoothType effectively doubles the resolution of text on the screen by blurring the edges of bitmap fonts with shades of gray, a technique called "anti-aliasing". Although Apple introduced a limited form of font smoothing in Mac OS 8.5, SmoothType offers greater flexibility and uses a more aggressive algorithm--similar to how Adobe Acrobat views PDF files--that produces much better results. Apple is now using such smoothed text in Mac OS X, but only for applications that use the Quartz graphics engine.
Version 2.2.3 improves kerning, fixes problems with Internet Explorer, DreamWeaver, and BBEdit, and prevents its shareware reminder from appearing during the initial trial period. SmoothType 2.2.3 is a 106K download.
SmoothType is available for US$10. You can find more information at Mr. Landweberis Web site.