Poor quality font rendering

[John C. Turnbull]

John H, it may be just me but pretty much *all* the fonts in your screenshot
look quite poor and noticeably different from native font rendering.  If you
look for instance at the text in the "Plot" section, to me that text looks
awful.

Is that inside a WebView or some other control?

-jct

-----Original Message-----
From: openjfx-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net
[mailto:openjfx-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx
Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29
To: openjfx-dev at openjdk.java.net
Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering


I took another good look, and I see what is bothering me is mostly how the
glyph "2" is rendered on my system (it has a thick appearing curve attached
to the base).  I've included a screenshot of my application that uses
several different sizes fonts, but it seems only the ones in the top bar are
rendered somewhat wierd.

http://ukyo.xs4all.nl/Digit2RenderedPoorlyInTopBar.png

I'm on Windows 7, JavaFX 8b99, 32-bit, using D3D pipeline (I get this stuff
in log in an infinite loop, so must be D3D I think):

D3D Vram Pool: 129,613,674 used (48.3%), 129,613,674 managed (48.3%), 
268,435,456 total                   -- 
com.sun.prism.impl.ManagedResource.printSummary(ManagedResource.java:134)
75 total resources being 
managed

-- com.sun.prism.impl.ManagedResource.printSummary(ManagedResource.java:153)
4 permanent resources 
(5.3%)

-- com.sun.prism.impl.ManagedResource.printSummary(ManagedResource.java:154)
2 resources locked 
(2.7%)

-- com.sun.prism.impl.ManagedResource.printSummary(ManagedResource.java:156)
43 resources contain interesting data 
(57.3%)                                                             -- 
com.sun.prism.impl.ManagedResource.printSummary(ManagedResource.java:158)
0 resources disappeared 
(0.0%)

-- com.sun.prism.impl.ManagedResource.printSummary(ManagedResource.java:160)

I also have this in main, before Application.launch is called:

     System.setProperty("prism.lcdtext", "false");

In .root in CSS I have:

   -fx-font-family: "Arial";
   -fx-font-size: 16px;
   -fx-font-weight: normal;

So all the fonts you see should be Arial (but the sizes and weights are
tweaked depending on location).

--John

On 21/08/2013 20:51, Felipe Heidrich wrote:
> John H:
>
> In JFX we decided to go with sub-pixel positioned text (as opposite to
pixel grid aligned).
>
> That said, on Windows for grayscale text, we are not doing that (yet). Are
you running Windows, with D3D pipeline ?
> I would need to see a picture to be sure I understand the problem you
describe.
>
> Felipe
>
>
> On Aug 21, 2013, at 10:19 AM, John Hendrikx wrote:
>
>> I think I also noticed a change in font rendering around b99 somewhere...
the fonts seem to be thinner than before, or perhaps more poorly aligned
with pixel boundaries.  I'd prefer glyphs laid out in the same way each
time, ie. letters are always on a new pixel boundary, so the same letter
will look the same regardless of what preceeds it.  I have LCD rendering
turned off as I donot appreciate colored fringes on my glyphs.
>>
>> On 21/08/2013 14:53, John C. Turnbull wrote:
>>> I have only really tested JavaFX extensively on Windows so my 
>>> comments here apply mainly to that platform.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It seems that even with a font smoothing type of LCD, font rendering 
>>> in JavaFX is not at the same level of quality of native 
>>> applications.  My current experiences are with JavaFX 8 b103 and I 
>>> find that all rendered text in JavaFX appears of a significantly 
>>> poorer quality than that which I would see in Word for example or 
>>> even in IE10 (which I believe uses the same text rendering engine).
Also, these observations are based on text in "standard"
>>> controls and the quality of font rendering is dramatically worse 
>>> within the Canvas control.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I am not an expert in font technology but I have read many times 
>>> that the levels of antialiasing for text that can be achieved in a 
>>> GPU-based renderer are always going to be less than that achieved in a
CPU-based renderer.
>>> This is often explained on the basis of graphics card drivers being 
>>> optimised for performance and the rapid rendering of triangles 
>>> commonly required in games rather than for rendering quality when it
comes to text.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Is this the reason why JavaFX font rendering appears less legible 
>>> and of a lower quality than native apps?
>>>
>>> If so, how does IE10 for example achieve a higher quality of 
>>> rendering when it seems to also use DirectWrite?
>>>
>>> Is the quality of JavaFX font rendering ever going to improve?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -jct
>>>