[Gimp-user] Font quality in GIF files

[Amit Ramon]

Hello,

I'm trying to create a logo that consists of some text over transparent 
background. I want it to be in GIF format. I create the text with the text 
tool. Now in gimp, it looks great. However, when I go and export it to a GIF, 
the fonts loose quality.

Here is my understanding of what happen:
The fonts are anti-aliased using transparency (alpha).
Then, before I can save it as GIF, I need to change the mode to indexed, which 
creates a color map.
The color map created actually contains a single color (where in gif it could 
contain as much as 256 different colors).
Since there is only one color, fonts cannot be anti-aliased and that's why 
they look so bad.
I think that since the initial anti-aliasing is done using alpha, all pixels 
actually have the same color (but different alpha), and that's why the color 
map contains only a single color.

Technically, as far as I understand, there should be no problem to have a good 
anti-aliased fonts in a gif file. The problem is with the very specific 
method I (or gimp?) creates the gif.

Does anyone here knows how can one create a decent anti-aliased text in gif 
file?

Thanks,

Amit