Since I got my Mac back, my fonts are weird again.

Back when I first got the iMac, I noticed something odd, which is that light text on a dark background is rendered more bold than the other way around. Consequently, the theme used by my LJ and the DNA site look kind of assy.

Then a month or so later, the problem went away, and my fonts looked like they should. Maybe there was a Software Update, maybe it was some other app I installed, I don't know, but something seemed to have shaken the cobwebs out of the font renderer.

Well, I need to do that again, and I have no idea how.

Check out this weirdness, which I suspect is related in some way: my tcsh $prompt is "%U%B<`whoami`@%m:%~/>%u%b ", meaning the prompt is bold. This is what Terminal looks like:

with antialiasing off:

and with it on:

When "Window Settings/Display/Anti-aliasing" is checked, the non-bold fonts become bold, and the bold fonts become non-bold! WTF?

Update: Set System Preferences / General / Font Smoothing Style to "Standard", and quit/restart Safari/Terminal etc., and this problem goes away.