Erm, aside from Office, just how many programs out there render text like that? Since we're talking about web browsers, shouldn't we be testing, um, web browsers? Try your test in Firefox 3.x. Or IE 7/8. Or Windows Notepad. Or just look at the menus in Windows Explorer. You'll see that spacing is always perfectly consistent throughout. And the text is crisp and clear, not weak, faded and grainy-looking as you'd find in a WPF application (e.g., PowerShell) or IE9's content area. So why does your example--Word--render text differently? I'm not sure. Word uses GDI+, which is different from GDI, and this difference might be the result of the more complicated text rendering that GDI+ uses (since the use of GDI+ in the Windows ecosystem is pretty rare, I can't think of another GDI+ application that I can use for a comparison). Or this could be because Word is one of those few programs that actually needs to bridge the gap between screen and paper, and as a result, I would expect Word to fiddle with glyph spacing a bit to compensate for the differences between what you see on the screen and what gets printed. Whatever the underlying reason for Word's rendering, it is irrelevant to this discussion and a red herring since Word isn't a web browser and since no other programs that I know of spaces text like that. PS: And as I already conceded multiple times in this thread, GDI rendering sacrifices typeface fidelity for pixel-grid conformity. And your links simply confirm that. But, really, I don't give a damn about typeface purity. And I suspect that 99% of people don't, either. We're not magazine publishers or designers who need to make sure that what's on the screen is precisely what will be shown on paper. What most computer users care about is screen readability. Microsoft consciously favored that screen readability over typeface fidelity (Apple, notably, made the opposite choice) around two decades ago when they designed their TrueType renderer in GDI (and they reinforced that decision by creating several typefaces such as Verdana and Segoe that are designed specifically for the screen and not for print), and, frankly, I think it was the right choice and that they are fools now for backtracking on this long-established tradition of favoring the pixel grid over archaic print, esp. now that the former is increasingly supplanting the latter. PPS: Now, this DirectWrite thing might be a good for programs that translate screen to paper, like Word... that is, if the user actually cared about whether the line wrap positions appear on paper exactly where they appear on screen; personally, I would still prefer crispier text and less eyestrain when typing over accuracy in the layout spacing and glyph positioning.
Good thing MS charges so much money for their products, that way you are assured very professional an no-nonsense help from their helpdesk. By the looks of your posts they might even let you talk to some software engineers