RE: Poor quality font rendering
Ok so apparently I can't send .bmp attachments to this list. Here's an imgur link: http://imgur.com/d5AiHFk It looks identical to the .bmp, as far as I can tell. Cheers, Rob -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] Im Auftrag von Robert Fisher Gesendet: Donnerstag, 29. August 2013 09:07 An: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Betreff: RE: Poor quality font rendering Hi all, I've done a few tests to compare font rendering between JavaFX and something native on my 64bit Windows 7 machine. I used Firefox to test native font rendering, and JavaFX 8 b100 (my apologies if something's been fixed since then), using the code Phil just posted to create a Label, explicitly specifying black text a white background. The font is the default one: Segoe UI, size 12. I've attached a screenshot of the word 'Entry' blown up 400%, with the native text on the left. They are similar but the native text is slightly darker. This is actually quite significant - when viewed at 100% the native text looks clearer and more vibrant. The right side of the 'r' is also cut off in the JavaFX case. Is this related to https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ? And is there anything I can do to increase the 'blackness' of my JavaFX text and make it more like the native text? Thanks for the help. Rob
RE: Poor quality font rendering
Hi all, I've done a few tests to compare font rendering between JavaFX and something native on my 64bit Windows 7 machine. I used Firefox to test native font rendering, and JavaFX 8 b100 (my apologies if something's been fixed since then), using the code Phil just posted to create a Label, explicitly specifying black text a white background. The font is the default one: Segoe UI, size 12. I've attached a screenshot of the word 'Entry' blown up 400%, with the native text on the left. They are similar but the native text is slightly darker. This is actually quite significant - when viewed at 100% the native text looks clearer and more vibrant. The right side of the 'r' is also cut off in the JavaFX case. Is this related to https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ? And is there anything I can do to increase the 'blackness' of my JavaFX text and make it more like the native text? Thanks for the help. Rob
Re: Poor quality font rendering
Hi Robert, Please add this information to https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 See my previous message, it is possible the difference is due to the shader we use to produce subpixel glyphs. I would have used IE as a representative of a native Windows Microsoft app, but I get the point. Thanks Felipe On Aug 29, 2013, at 12:07 AM, Robert Fisher wrote: Hi all, I've done a few tests to compare font rendering between JavaFX and something native on my 64bit Windows 7 machine. I used Firefox to test native font rendering, and JavaFX 8 b100 (my apologies if something's been fixed since then), using the code Phil just posted to create a Label, explicitly specifying black text a white background. The font is the default one: Segoe UI, size 12. I've attached a screenshot of the word 'Entry' blown up 400%, with the native text on the left. They are similar but the native text is slightly darker. This is actually quite significant - when viewed at 100% the native text looks clearer and more vibrant. The right side of the 'r' is also cut off in the JavaFX case. Is this related to https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ? And is there anything I can do to increase the 'blackness' of my JavaFX text and make it more like the native text? Thanks for the help. Rob
Re: Poor quality font rendering
I need to know what is been tested (the code snippet that created the JFX sample) and native app that produced the other sample. I think what is going on there is that in JFX we are producing our own subpixel glyphs in the shader (instead using DW to produce subpixel glyph images). Note the current JDK approach as an a big advantage that we only need to store a single glyph image in the glyph cache's texture. Using DW to produces subpixel images we will use 3 or 4 times more texture space. Please, add the screenshot information to https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 so I can look at it. Thank you Felipe On Aug 29, 2013, at 12:27 AM, John C. Turnbull wrote: These observations are consistent with what I have been experiencing and trying to describe. There is still quite a difference between native text and JavaFX text with native text certainly looking better. Is there any hope that this will improve? It may sound petty/minor but to me this is critical to fix. -jct -Original Message- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Robert Fisher Sent: Thursday, 29 August 2013 17:21 To: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: RE: Poor quality font rendering Ok so apparently I can't send .bmp attachments to this list. Here's an imgur link: http://imgur.com/d5AiHFk It looks identical to the .bmp, as far as I can tell. Cheers, Rob -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] Im Auftrag von Robert Fisher Gesendet: Donnerstag, 29. August 2013 09:07 An: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Betreff: RE: Poor quality font rendering Hi all, I've done a few tests to compare font rendering between JavaFX and something native on my 64bit Windows 7 machine. I used Firefox to test native font rendering, and JavaFX 8 b100 (my apologies if something's been fixed since then), using the code Phil just posted to create a Label, explicitly specifying black text a white background. The font is the default one: Segoe UI, size 12. I've attached a screenshot of the word 'Entry' blown up 400%, with the native text on the left. They are similar but the native text is slightly darker. This is actually quite significant - when viewed at 100% the native text looks clearer and more vibrant. The right side of the 'r' is also cut off in the JavaFX case. Is this related to https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ? And is there anything I can do to increase the 'blackness' of my JavaFX text and make it more like the native text? Thanks for the help. Rob
RE: Poor quality font rendering
Hi Felipe, thanks for the response. I added a comment to the JIRA issue. I don't have IE installed on my system, but I just made a similar comparison with text in Outlook, and it was indistinguishable from the text in Firefox. Cheers, Rob Von: Felipe Heidrich [mailto:felipe.heidr...@oracle.com] Gesendet: Donnerstag, 29. August 2013 17:42 An: Robert Fisher Cc: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Betreff: Re: Poor quality font rendering Hi Robert, Please add this information to https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 See my previous message, it is possible the difference is due to the shader we use to produce subpixel glyphs. I would have used IE as a representative of a native Windows Microsoft app, but I get the point. Thanks Felipe On Aug 29, 2013, at 12:07 AM, Robert Fisher wrote: Hi all, I've done a few tests to compare font rendering between JavaFX and something native on my 64bit Windows 7 machine. I used Firefox to test native font rendering, and JavaFX 8 b100 (my apologies if something's been fixed since then), using the code Phil just posted to create a Label, explicitly specifying black text a white background. The font is the default one: Segoe UI, size 12. I've attached a screenshot of the word 'Entry' blown up 400%, with the native text on the left. They are similar but the native text is slightly darker. This is actually quite significant - when viewed at 100% the native text looks clearer and more vibrant. The right side of the 'r' is also cut off in the JavaFX case. Is this related to https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ? And is there anything I can do to increase the 'blackness' of my JavaFX text and make it more like the native text? Thanks for the help. Rob
RE: Poor quality font rendering
Hi Felipe, Thanks for the info. Is kerning planned for a Java 8 update or will it have to wait for 9? Or 10? One more thing I have just noticed is that the way the text is rendered in a Text object with LCD font smoothing is quite different from a Label (with the Text object looking better and closer to native text). While I concede that the better font rendering I thought I observed in WebView is probably an illusion, there is definitely a difference between Text and Label (at least on this machine). Why would that be? Are they rendered differently? Thanks, -jct -Original Message- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Felipe Heidrich Sent: Wednesday, 28 August 2013 01:30 To: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net List Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering Hi John, 1. Sub-pixel positioning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ) Yes, if all goes well RT-14187 will get fixed for FX8. Notes: -On Mac we already have sub-pixel positioned glyphs. -LCD text we also have sub-pixel positioned glyphs. -The main one that I feel we are missing is grayscale text for Windows. -It is very unlikely we will have time to do anything for Linux this time around. 2. Kerning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-7472 ) Not target for 8. 3. Is it just my imagination. Webview node and text node both use the very same drawing code in Prism. I would not expect to see any difference... I hope this helps, Felipe On Aug 27, 2013, at 3:42 AM, John C. Turnbull wrote: I am still hoping someone can answer my questions on this topic (included here for convenience): 1. When will both (1) and (2) make it into a JDK8 development build? 2. Are there any other plans/techniques to improve font rendering on the horizon for JFX8 or later? But I noticed something further which I think is a little curious... It may just be an optical illusion but it definitely appears to me that font rendering within WebView is of a considerably better quality than that in other controls (such as Label, Text) in the sense that it appears crisper and much closer to the native font rendering of the Windows OS. So I would like to add another question: 3. Is this just my imagination? I realise that it's WebKit that contains the rendering code but I would have thought that the exact same Prism calls would be made from within this renderer as would be used by other controls so I don't see why there would be any difference. Thanks, -jct -Original Message- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John C. Turnbull Sent: Friday, 23 August 2013 17:23 To: 'Phil Race'; 'John Hendrikx'; 'Felipe Heidrich' Cc: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: RE: Poor quality font rendering OK, thanks to everyone who has contributed input to this thread - it's been most enlightening. So, in summary, it seems that the dark art of font rendering is complex and made more so by having to support numerous different operating systems, font engines, GPUs and monitors etc. I am sure JavaFX does a pretty good job already under most circumstances but I (personally) hope things improve further in the future and that the gap between JavaFX font rendering quality and that of native font rendering is narrowed. To this end, there seem to be two main improvements already under development namely: 1. Sub-pixel positioning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ) 2. Kerning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-7472 ) To assist me in my decision making and planning, would it be possible for someone to answer: 1. When will both (1) and (2) make it into a JDK8 development build? 2. Are there any other plans/techniques to improve font rendering on the horizon for JFX8 or later? As I said, my focus is Windows 7 and Windows 8 at the moment so even if you can only answer within these contexts it would be much appreciated! Thanks, -jct -Original Message- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Phil Race Sent: Friday, 23 August 2013 06:57 To: John Hendrikx Cc: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering On 8/22/2013 1:23 PM, John Hendrikx wrote: Oh.. I forgot to say this, but... Screenshots taken with LCD smoothing on are always gonna end up looking different on different monitors... if for example your monitor has slightly different spacing or a different order of the subpixels (or you rotated it), then the screenshot will look wierd. I prefer to keep LCD smoothing off as I make screenshots / videos regularly and I donot know on what system they'll be viewed on. So if one of shots has particularly bad colored fringes, it is likely you have a monitor that has a different configuration than mine
Re: Poor quality font rendering
The Grey vs LCD would explain it. I haven't ever tried to alter the defaults. On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 11:27 AM, Danno Ferrin danno.fer...@shemnon.comwrote: Are you seeing the different defaults for LCD smoothing? The Text default is Grey and the Control default (which Label inherits) is LCD. On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 5:23 AM, Scott Palmer swpal...@gmail.com wrote: From what I have observed, Text and Label appear to have different defaults for when antialiasing is applied. Text will do it always, Label only when the font is greater than a certain size. Scott On 2013-08-28, at 5:26 AM, John C. Turnbull ozem...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Hi Felipe, Thanks for the info. Is kerning planned for a Java 8 update or will it have to wait for 9? Or 10? One more thing I have just noticed is that the way the text is rendered in a Text object with LCD font smoothing is quite different from a Label (with the Text object looking better and closer to native text). While I concede that the better font rendering I thought I observed in WebView is probably an illusion, there is definitely a difference between Text and Label (at least on this machine). Why would that be? Are they rendered differently? Thanks, -jct
RE: Poor quality font rendering
Hi Danno, I am comparing Text with LCD smoothing and Label (untouched) so shouldn't they both be using LCD smoothing and look the same? They actually look quite different. -jct From: Danno Ferrin [mailto:danno.fer...@shemnon.com] Sent: Thursday, 29 August 2013 01:28 To: Scott Palmer Cc: John C. Turnbull; openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Mailing Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering Are you seeing the different defaults for LCD smoothing? The Text default is Grey and the Control default (which Label inherits) is LCD. On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 5:23 AM, Scott Palmer swpal...@gmail.com mailto:swpal...@gmail.com wrote: From what I have observed, Text and Label appear to have different defaults for when antialiasing is applied. Text will do it always, Label only when the font is greater than a certain size. Scott On 2013-08-28, at 5:26 AM, John C. Turnbull ozem...@ozemail.com.au mailto:ozem...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Hi Felipe, Thanks for the info. Is kerning planned for a Java 8 update or will it have to wait for 9? Or 10? One more thing I have just noticed is that the way the text is rendered in a Text object with LCD font smoothing is quite different from a Label (with the Text object looking better and closer to native text). While I concede that the better font rendering I thought I observed in WebView is probably an illusion, there is definitely a difference between Text and Label (at least on this machine). Why would that be? Are they rendered differently? Thanks, -jct
Re: Poor quality font rendering
, but I assume it asks Windows for this information. --John Regards, Felipe On Aug 22, 2013, at 7:05 AM, John Hendrikx wrote: Those are all normal controls, the plot section is just a Label for example. On 22/08/2013 13:39, John C. Turnbull wrote: 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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
If you let Label choose the colours, they are different, but your eye
has to be pretty good.
The foreground colour of the label text is not exactly black even though
you think it is.
You'll need to force it.
Also the background fill chosen by the layout managers seems to be not
quite white either.
So the end result is poorer contrast than straight black on white.
In this code below, I've forced a white background and a black
foreground and
the results are identical on my Win7 x64 box.
I've got a VBox as parent of both Label and Text but in your app its
possible
that you 'happen' to have pure white for Text already, which makes the
comparison against the UI control more apparent.
I do not know where/why the f/g and the b/g are 'tweaked' but they
look superficially like black white so people who want those think
they have nothing to do, yet its not exactly so.
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.scene.Group;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.paint.*;
import javafx.scene.text.Font;
import javafx.scene.text.FontSmoothingType;
import javafx.scene.text.*;
import javafx.scene.text.Text;
import javafx.scene.Node;
import javafx.scene.layout.VBox;
import javafx.scene.layout.Background;
import javafx.scene.layout.BackgroundFill;
import javafx.scene.control.Label;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class TextComp extends Application {
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
@Override public void start(Stage stage) {
String str = Hello World;
Text t = new Text(10, 150, str);
t.setFontSmoothingType(FontSmoothingType.LCD);
Label l = new Label(str);
l.setTextFill(Color.BLACK);
VBox vb = new VBox();
BackgroundFill bgFill = new BackgroundFill(Color.WHITE, null,
null);
Background bg = new Background(bgFill);
vb.setBackground(bg);
Scene s = new Scene(vb);
stage.setScene(s);
vb.getChildren().add(t);
vb.getChildren().add(l);
stage.show();
}
}
-phil.
On 8/28/2013 3:48 PM, John C. Turnbull wrote:
Hi Danno,
I am comparing Text with LCD smoothing and Label (untouched) so shouldn't
they both be using LCD smoothing and look the same? They actually look
quite different.
-jct
From: Danno Ferrin [mailto:danno.fer...@shemnon.com]
Sent: Thursday, 29 August 2013 01:28
To: Scott Palmer
Cc: John C. Turnbull; openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Mailing
Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering
Are you seeing the different defaults for LCD smoothing? The Text default
is Grey and the Control default (which Label inherits) is LCD.
On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 5:23 AM, Scott Palmer swpal...@gmail.com
mailto:swpal...@gmail.com wrote:
From what I have observed, Text and Label appear to have different defaults
for when antialiasing is applied. Text will do it always, Label only when
the font is greater than a certain size.
Scott
On 2013-08-28, at 5:26 AM, John C. Turnbull ozem...@ozemail.com.au
mailto:ozem...@ozemail.com.au wrote:
Hi Felipe,
Thanks for the info.
Is kerning planned for a Java 8 update or will it have to wait for 9? Or
10?
One more thing I have just noticed is that the way the text is rendered in
a
Text object with LCD font smoothing is quite different from a Label (with
the Text object looking better and closer to native text).
While I concede that the better font rendering I thought I observed in
WebView is probably an illusion, there is definitely a difference between
Text and Label (at least on this machine).
Why would that be? Are they rendered differently?
Thanks,
-jct
RE: Poor quality font rendering
I am still hoping someone can answer my questions on this topic (included here for convenience): 1. When will both (1) and (2) make it into a JDK8 development build? 2. Are there any other plans/techniques to improve font rendering on the horizon for JFX8 or later? But I noticed something further which I think is a little curious... It may just be an optical illusion but it definitely appears to me that font rendering within WebView is of a considerably better quality than that in other controls (such as Label, Text) in the sense that it appears crisper and much closer to the native font rendering of the Windows OS. So I would like to add another question: 3. Is this just my imagination? I realise that it's WebKit that contains the rendering code but I would have thought that the exact same Prism calls would be made from within this renderer as would be used by other controls so I don't see why there would be any difference. Thanks, -jct -Original Message- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John C. Turnbull Sent: Friday, 23 August 2013 17:23 To: 'Phil Race'; 'John Hendrikx'; 'Felipe Heidrich' Cc: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: RE: Poor quality font rendering OK, thanks to everyone who has contributed input to this thread - it's been most enlightening. So, in summary, it seems that the dark art of font rendering is complex and made more so by having to support numerous different operating systems, font engines, GPUs and monitors etc. I am sure JavaFX does a pretty good job already under most circumstances but I (personally) hope things improve further in the future and that the gap between JavaFX font rendering quality and that of native font rendering is narrowed. To this end, there seem to be two main improvements already under development namely: 1. Sub-pixel positioning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ) 2. Kerning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-7472 ) To assist me in my decision making and planning, would it be possible for someone to answer: 1. When will both (1) and (2) make it into a JDK8 development build? 2. Are there any other plans/techniques to improve font rendering on the horizon for JFX8 or later? As I said, my focus is Windows 7 and Windows 8 at the moment so even if you can only answer within these contexts it would be much appreciated! Thanks, -jct -Original Message- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Phil Race Sent: Friday, 23 August 2013 06:57 To: John Hendrikx Cc: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering On 8/22/2013 1:23 PM, John Hendrikx wrote: Oh.. I forgot to say this, but... Screenshots taken with LCD smoothing on are always gonna end up looking different on different monitors... if for example your monitor has slightly different spacing or a different order of the subpixels (or you rotated it), then the screenshot will look wierd. I prefer to keep LCD smoothing off as I make screenshots / videos regularly and I donot know on what system they'll be viewed on. So if one of shots has particularly bad colored fringes, it is likely you have a monitor that has a different configuration than mine. Yes. I have a BGR monitor here :-) 90 degrees rotation also invalidates the LCD but it doesn't look as bad as getting RGB-BGR wrong Devices like the i-whatsit and Android ones don't use LCD and I think that is one reason. OLED displays don't work well with it either. Windows is deficient in that it doesn't provide anyway to set LCD on a per-screen basis and it should. But most about every desktop/laptop is normal rotation LCD in RGB format. -phil.
Re: Poor quality font rendering
Hi John, 1. Sub-pixel positioning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ) Yes, if all goes well RT-14187 will get fixed for FX8. Notes: -On Mac we already have sub-pixel positioned glyphs. -LCD text we also have sub-pixel positioned glyphs. -The main one that I feel we are missing is grayscale text for Windows. -It is very unlikely we will have time to do anything for Linux this time around. 2. Kerning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-7472 ) Not target for 8. 3. Is it just my imagination. Webview node and text node both use the very same drawing code in Prism. I would not expect to see any difference... I hope this helps, Felipe On Aug 27, 2013, at 3:42 AM, John C. Turnbull wrote: I am still hoping someone can answer my questions on this topic (included here for convenience): 1. When will both (1) and (2) make it into a JDK8 development build? 2. Are there any other plans/techniques to improve font rendering on the horizon for JFX8 or later? But I noticed something further which I think is a little curious... It may just be an optical illusion but it definitely appears to me that font rendering within WebView is of a considerably better quality than that in other controls (such as Label, Text) in the sense that it appears crisper and much closer to the native font rendering of the Windows OS. So I would like to add another question: 3. Is this just my imagination? I realise that it's WebKit that contains the rendering code but I would have thought that the exact same Prism calls would be made from within this renderer as would be used by other controls so I don't see why there would be any difference. Thanks, -jct -Original Message- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John C. Turnbull Sent: Friday, 23 August 2013 17:23 To: 'Phil Race'; 'John Hendrikx'; 'Felipe Heidrich' Cc: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: RE: Poor quality font rendering OK, thanks to everyone who has contributed input to this thread - it's been most enlightening. So, in summary, it seems that the dark art of font rendering is complex and made more so by having to support numerous different operating systems, font engines, GPUs and monitors etc. I am sure JavaFX does a pretty good job already under most circumstances but I (personally) hope things improve further in the future and that the gap between JavaFX font rendering quality and that of native font rendering is narrowed. To this end, there seem to be two main improvements already under development namely: 1. Sub-pixel positioning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ) 2. Kerning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-7472 ) To assist me in my decision making and planning, would it be possible for someone to answer: 1. When will both (1) and (2) make it into a JDK8 development build? 2. Are there any other plans/techniques to improve font rendering on the horizon for JFX8 or later? As I said, my focus is Windows 7 and Windows 8 at the moment so even if you can only answer within these contexts it would be much appreciated! Thanks, -jct -Original Message- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Phil Race Sent: Friday, 23 August 2013 06:57 To: John Hendrikx Cc: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering On 8/22/2013 1:23 PM, John Hendrikx wrote: Oh.. I forgot to say this, but... Screenshots taken with LCD smoothing on are always gonna end up looking different on different monitors... if for example your monitor has slightly different spacing or a different order of the subpixels (or you rotated it), then the screenshot will look wierd. I prefer to keep LCD smoothing off as I make screenshots / videos regularly and I donot know on what system they'll be viewed on. So if one of shots has particularly bad colored fringes, it is likely you have a monitor that has a different configuration than mine. Yes. I have a BGR monitor here :-) 90 degrees rotation also invalidates the LCD but it doesn't look as bad as getting RGB-BGR wrong Devices like the i-whatsit and Android ones don't use LCD and I think that is one reason. OLED displays don't work well with it either. Windows is deficient in that it doesn't provide anyway to set LCD on a per-screen basis and it should. But most about every desktop/laptop is normal rotation LCD in RGB format. -phil.
Re: Poor quality font rendering
Hi John Thank you for the images! Comparing DirectWrite versus T2K for grayscale text the main difference that jumps at me is that in DirectWrite (which is what you get when prism.text=t2k is not set) the glyphs look a touch taller, looking somewhat stretched. Inspecting it closely you can see the actual pixel size is the same, it is the anti-aliasing at the top that is different. I'll see if anything can be done differently in DirectWrite to avoid this 'stretched' look, would that be better ? DirectWrite LCD for me is the one that gives the best result. That said, that is something wrong going on in the text over the progress bar. Is it possible to run the same test case on Mac ? (Grayscale text, prism.text=t2k *not* set). Regards Felipe On Aug 22, 2013, at 12:54 PM, John Hendrikx wrote: On 22/08/2013 17:38, Felipe Heidrich wrote: John, for the sake of testing. Could you enable LCD text for the plot Label in your app ? Please let me know if that improves the position of each glyph (relative to one another). You should also try your app using our previous text rasterizer, run with -Dprism.text=t2k Is that better for you ? Sure, I've created approximately the same shots with different settings for comparison: prism.lcdtext=false http://ukyo.xs4all.nl/Digit2RenderedPoorlyInTopBar.png prism.lcdtext=true http://ukyo.xs4all.nl/LCDSmoothed.png prism.lcdtext=true, prism.text=t2k http://ukyo.xs4all.nl/LCDSmoothedT2K.png prism.lcdtext=false, prism.text=t2k http://ukyo.xs4all.nl/GrayscaleT2K.png Now that I compared them all, the last one is how it was for the longest time. Now I also noticed that in the last shot the font height is a pixel smaller, which is one the changes I couldn't put my finger on. The LCD smoothed versions look quite good, but (as you can see in screenshot 2) it for same reason garbles my memory indicator when the background image is fading in. After the fade-in completes, the text is correct (I screenshotted it just before the fade-in completes to show the garbled text). This occurs with both the normal and t2k renderer when LCD text is on. So, to make it clear: 1) Grayscale only: some glyphs look akward when bolded 2) Grayscale only + t2k: this is how I expected it to be (I tuned the look for that). Apparently this default has changed(?). The font in the top bar seems to be 1 pixel less high then in all the other version. 3) LCD only: Looks quite good on my normal LCD screens (better than Windows in my opinion, but perhaps the light-on-dark vs dark-on-light is the cause of that) 4) LCD only + t2k: Also looks good, I think (3) looks better though 3+4 fail when I drag the Window to my projector. Colored fringes are visible. This is probably a driver problem as Windows may not realize that my Projector is not using LCD (DLP projector). I'm not sure how JavaFX figures this out, but I assume it asks Windows for this information. --John Regards, Felipe On Aug 22, 2013, at 7:05 AM, John Hendrikx wrote: Those are all normal controls, the plot section is just a Label for example. On 22/08/2013 13:39, John C. Turnbull wrote: 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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
RE: Poor quality font rendering
OK, thanks to everyone who has contributed input to this thread - it's been most enlightening. So, in summary, it seems that the dark art of font rendering is complex and made more so by having to support numerous different operating systems, font engines, GPUs and monitors etc. I am sure JavaFX does a pretty good job already under most circumstances but I (personally) hope things improve further in the future and that the gap between JavaFX font rendering quality and that of native font rendering is narrowed. To this end, there seem to be two main improvements already under development namely: 1. Sub-pixel positioning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ) 2. Kerning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-7472 ) To assist me in my decision making and planning, would it be possible for someone to answer: 1. When will both (1) and (2) make it into a JDK8 development build? 2. Are there any other plans/techniques to improve font rendering on the horizon for JFX8 or later? As I said, my focus is Windows 7 and Windows 8 at the moment so even if you can only answer within these contexts it would be much appreciated! Thanks, -jct -Original Message- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Phil Race Sent: Friday, 23 August 2013 06:57 To: John Hendrikx Cc: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering On 8/22/2013 1:23 PM, John Hendrikx wrote: Oh.. I forgot to say this, but... Screenshots taken with LCD smoothing on are always gonna end up looking different on different monitors... if for example your monitor has slightly different spacing or a different order of the subpixels (or you rotated it), then the screenshot will look wierd. I prefer to keep LCD smoothing off as I make screenshots / videos regularly and I donot know on what system they'll be viewed on. So if one of shots has particularly bad colored fringes, it is likely you have a monitor that has a different configuration than mine. Yes. I have a BGR monitor here :-) 90 degrees rotation also invalidates the LCD but it doesn't look as bad as getting RGB-BGR wrong Devices like the i-whatsit and Android ones don't use LCD and I think that is one reason. OLED displays don't work well with it either. Windows is deficient in that it doesn't provide anyway to set LCD on a per-screen basis and it should. But most about every desktop/laptop is normal rotation LCD in RGB format. -phil.
Re: Poor quality font rendering
I'm interested in the answers to John T's questions for Linux as well, as there have been reports that font rendering there could use some improvement (though I don't have a Linux machine to test it and the reports don't back themselves up with screen shots or quantifiable data). http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18382969/can-the-rendering-of-the-javafx-2-8-font-be-improved (sorry to add another John to the thread to confuse it ;-) Regards, John Smith
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
RE: Poor quality font rendering
Hi Richard, I do not know enough about font technology to be able to identify exactly what the nature of the difference between native and JavaFX font rendering is. All I can really say is that there *is* a difference firstly and secondly that the fonts rendered by JavaFX don't look as aesthetically pleasing as the native ones. I guess they do not look as crisp (i.e. appear a little bit fuzzy) and some of the glyphs appear to not be quite right in the sense that they are blurry and almost see-through. This reminds me of a problem I have had in developing UIs with Java over the years namely that it's really hard to get a Java application to look like a native one. I had hoped that this problem would be solved with JavaFX but it appears that it's still going to be obvious to the end user that my JavaFX application is just that: a Java application and not a native one. I believe that subtle differences in the rendering quality of fonts are noticeable to the user, even if they do not know why their app does not look quite right. Felipe, are you able to say if what we have with JavaFX font rendering on Windows currently is as good as it is going to get or are there further enhancements planned? Thanks, -jct -Original Message- From: Richard Bair [mailto:richard.b...@oracle.com] Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 01:16 To: John C. Turnbull Cc: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering We're using the native font rasterizer. Can you explain font render in JavaFX is not at the same level of quality of native applications? Is it the shape of the glyphs, or how they are laid out relative to one another, or something else? The GPU-based and CPU-based issue is a red herring. We're using the CPU for producing the masks (or whatever technique the native rasterizer is using) and then the GPU is treating it as an image (which it fills with whatever paint you've supplied). Richard On Aug 21, 2013, at 5:53 AM, John C. Turnbull ozem...@ozemail.com.au 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
RE: Poor quality font rendering
Hi Felipe, Thanks for the info. I will see if I can get some screenshots together that highlight the differences and then file a JIRA issue. The differences are not dramatic but noticeable enough to lessen the impression of professional quality of my application (in my opinion). P.S. I am only talking about text rendered in controls other than Canvas. Canvas font rendering is really awful on both my Windows machines and I so hope that LCD font smoothing is made available for Canvas before I have to ship. -jct -Original Message- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Felipe Heidrich Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 05:04 To: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net List Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering Hi John T. In JFX we use DirectWrite to produce glyph images, which I believe it what IE10 uses (once upon the time I heard that Word used Uniscribe, which is a different MS library for text. Nowadays, I have no clue). Although we use the same base library it is possible to have differences caused by: a) we are still using our shader program to produce sub-pixel positioned glyphs (LCD). b) using different values for gamma correction (unlikely) But these problems would only cause very very subtle differences in the rendering (I think), and with a bit more time I should be able to fix both. Could you please provide a picture of exact case you are seeing (maybe file a jira) ? Thank you Felipe On Aug 21, 2013, at 5:53 AM, 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
RE: Poor quality font rendering
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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
Those are all normal controls, the plot section is just a Label for example. On 22/08/2013 13:39, John C. Turnbull wrote: 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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
To do a fair comparison you need to use the same font face,size, foreground and background colors, etc. and compare the native and java -rendered text side by side (even at the same pixel coordinates in case it makes a difference). John H. mentioned Arial 16px normal in the CSS, and he mentions the sizes and weights are tweaked depending on location - the 2 that is rendering awkward looks like it has been made bold - probably via a transformation applied to the original font rather than selecting a naturally bold typeface. It's not always easy to tell though. I've seen poor font rendering in native applications too. (Web browsers on Linux are notoriously bad at making text look awful) I would try the same exact rendering in HTML and show it in a few different browers to compare. Then try the same thing in a word processor, etc. See if the context of the rendering affects the quality in non-Java applications as well. Scott On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:39 AM, John C. Turnbull ozem...@ozemail.com.auwrote: 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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
On 22/08/2013 16:45, Phil Race wrote: On 8/22/13 12:29 AM, John Hendrikx wrote: System.setProperty(prism.lcdtext, false); So you deliberately asked for it to be different than usual Windows apps ? I'm not sure why you do this, but if its in effect we can't expect to make any comparisons since IE10 etc will use LCD text I think. Its is the case on Windows pretty much everywhere MS can apply it. Sorry, don't confuse me with John T. -- I don't know what he did. I've turned it off simply because of the numerous issues with LCD rendering (but those are not JavaFX specific) -- it is turned off system-wide though, so if I wanted to make a comparison, I should still be able to. Anyway, I'm not making any direct comparisons (certainly not with IE10), but look at the screenshot, and see how poorly the 2 glyph is rendered in the top bar. This wasn't like that before and I've had that top bar in for well over a year now. --John
Re: Poor quality font rendering
Hi, The text in the plot section is probably going to look better when we fix: https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 (planned for 8.0) Note that using LCD text improves subpixel position. Another missing feature (in JFX) that would help in there is font kerning https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-7472 (not planned for 8.0) As for the weird looking '2' at the top that I don't know what it is, the easier thing to do is to use a different font. Also keeping in mind when comparing text (JFX versus whatever) make sure to the same string, same font, and same background too. Regards Felipe On Aug 22, 2013, at 7:05 AM, John Hendrikx wrote: Those are all normal controls, the plot section is just a Label for example. On 22/08/2013 13:39, John C. Turnbull wrote: 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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
John, for the sake of testing. Could you enable LCD text for the plot Label in your app ? Please let me know if that improves the position of each glyph (relative to one another). You should also try your app using our previous text rasterizer, run with -Dprism.text=t2k Is that better for you ? Regards, Felipe On Aug 22, 2013, at 7:05 AM, John Hendrikx wrote: Those are all normal controls, the plot section is just a Label for example. On 22/08/2013 13:39, John C. Turnbull wrote: 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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
Am I the only one who looks at that screenshot and thinks that the fonts look really bad and obviously different from a native app? Its not just the Plot section, its all text on the screen. This is what I am talking about. I wouldn't even describe the differences as subtle as to me there is a dramatic difference in quality. Can this be fixed or are JavaFX apps always going to stand out for all the wrong reasons like this? On 23/08/2013, at 0:05, John Hendrikx hj...@xs4all.nl wrote: Those are all normal controls, the plot section is just a Label for example. On 22/08/2013 13:39, John C. Turnbull wrote: 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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
Hi Phil, I was actually aware that LCD text was disabled in this case but what I am saying is that I am seeing similar stark disparities between JavaFX fonts and native fonts even with LCD turned on. I think the screenshot shows what I am talking about though perhaps the quality is poorer than my case because of the LCD issue. The point is that there are still differences no matter what I do and to me at least these differences are very, very obvious. I am trying to establish if what we have now is as good as it gets or if things are going to improve. Also, it's clear from this thread that not everyone agrees on what looks good. It would seem that John H is concerned only with the weird '2' and feels that grayscale text is better than LCD text whereas I am more concerned with resembling native rendering. On 23/08/2013, at 5:21, Phil Race philip.r...@oracle.com wrote: John T, Per a couple of earlier emails in this thread John H is deliberately disabling LCD text so has grey scale, hence you can't compare directly with a native app since they all use LCD. Any comparison has to be 1. Using the same string 2. Rendered in the same fashion : LCD or greyscale, hinted/unhinted. 3. Using the same font (face, size etc) 4. Using the same colours (fgbg) and watch out for the UI controls - they used to tweak your text colour so that (eg) black became dark grey, reducing contrast which reduced legibility, thus also invalidating any test. I am not sure if this is still the case, but contrast is very important for text and you should make sure its as high as possible. -phil. On 8/22/2013 11:35 AM, John C. Turnbull wrote: Am I the only one who looks at that screenshot and thinks that the fonts look really bad and obviously different from a native app? Its not just the Plot section, its all text on the screen. This is what I am talking about. I wouldn't even describe the differences as subtle as to me there is a dramatic difference in quality. Can this be fixed or are JavaFX apps always going to stand out for all the wrong reasons like this? On 23/08/2013, at 0:05, John Hendrikx hj...@xs4all.nl wrote: Those are all normal controls, the plot section is just a Label for example. On 22/08/2013 13:39, John C. Turnbull wrote: 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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
On 22/08/2013 21:24, Scott Palmer wrote: I just tried turning off ClearType on Windows and found that the result was pretty ugly. I assume that with ClearType turned off, the results should be comparable to what JavaFX is producing with grey-scale smoothing. It depends on how you did it, if you turned it fully off it may not even do grayscale smoothing... also the default font in Windows is not suitable for this. See below. I noticed that the same web page rendered text differently between Chrome and Firefox - Firefox seemed to have darker text. So even among native apps you can get different results for the same font. If you want to turn off cleartype in Windows 7, then just turning it off is not sufficient. You need to replace the default font with Tahoma as well as the Windows 7 default font (Segoe UI) sucks without LCD smoothing. I can recommend the cleartype switch program, see here: http://karpolan.com/software/cleartype-switch/ You'll want to keep smooth edges on, but cleartype off. Scott On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 3:21 PM, Phil Racephilip.r...@oracle.com wrote: John T, Per a couple of earlier emails in this thread John H is deliberately disabling LCD text so has grey scale, hence you can't compare directly with a native app since they all use LCD. Any comparison has to be 1. Using the same string 2. Rendered in the same fashion : LCD or greyscale, hinted/unhinted. 3. Using the same font (face, size etc) 4. Using the same colours (fgbg) and watch out for the UI controls - they used to tweak your text colour so that (eg) black became dark grey, reducing contrast which reduced legibility, thus also invalidating any test. I am not sure if this is still the case, but contrast is very important for text and you should make sure its as high as possible. -phil. On 8/22/2013 11:35 AM, John C. Turnbull wrote: Am I the only one who looks at that screenshot and thinks that the fonts look really bad and obviously different from a native app? Its not just the Plot section, its all text on the screen. This is what I am talking about. I wouldn't even describe the differences as subtle as to me there is a dramatic difference in quality. Can this be fixed or are JavaFX apps always going to stand out for all the wrong reasons like this? On 23/08/2013, at 0:05, John Hendrikxhj...@xs4all.nl wrote: Those are all normal controls, the plot section is just a Label for example. On 22/08/2013 13:39, John C. Turnbull wrote: 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@openjdk.**java.netopenjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-bounces@**openjdk.java.netopenjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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.**pnghttp://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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
On 22/08/2013 17:38, Felipe Heidrich wrote: John, for the sake of testing. Could you enable LCD text for the plot Label in your app ? Please let me know if that improves the position of each glyph (relative to one another). You should also try your app using our previous text rasterizer, run with -Dprism.text=t2k Is that better for you ? Sure, I've created approximately the same shots with different settings for comparison: prism.lcdtext=false http://ukyo.xs4all.nl/Digit2RenderedPoorlyInTopBar.png prism.lcdtext=true http://ukyo.xs4all.nl/LCDSmoothed.png prism.lcdtext=true, prism.text=t2k http://ukyo.xs4all.nl/LCDSmoothedT2K.png prism.lcdtext=false, prism.text=t2k http://ukyo.xs4all.nl/GrayscaleT2K.png Now that I compared them all, the last one is how it was for the longest time. Now I also noticed that in the last shot the font height is a pixel smaller, which is one the changes I couldn't put my finger on. The LCD smoothed versions look quite good, but (as you can see in screenshot 2) it for same reason garbles my memory indicator when the background image is fading in. After the fade-in completes, the text is correct (I screenshotted it just before the fade-in completes to show the garbled text). This occurs with both the normal and t2k renderer when LCD text is on. So, to make it clear: 1) Grayscale only: some glyphs look akward when bolded 2) Grayscale only + t2k: this is how I expected it to be (I tuned the look for that). Apparently this default has changed(?). The font in the top bar seems to be 1 pixel less high then in all the other version. 3) LCD only: Looks quite good on my normal LCD screens (better than Windows in my opinion, but perhaps the light-on-dark vs dark-on-light is the cause of that) 4) LCD only + t2k: Also looks good, I think (3) looks better though 3+4 fail when I drag the Window to my projector. Colored fringes are visible. This is probably a driver problem as Windows may not realize that my Projector is not using LCD (DLP projector). I'm not sure how JavaFX figures this out, but I assume it asks Windows for this information. --John Regards, Felipe On Aug 22, 2013, at 7:05 AM, John Hendrikx wrote: Those are all normal controls, the plot section is just a Label for example. On 22/08/2013 13:39, John C. Turnbull wrote: 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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
On 8/22/2013 12:54 PM, John Hendrikx wrote: 3+4 fail when I drag the Window to my projector. Colored fringes are visible. This is probably a driver problem as Windows may not realize that my Projector is not using LCD (DLP projector). I'm not sure how JavaFX figures this out, but I assume it asks Windows for this information. If you do something like save an IE 10 or Windows notepad screenshot, and open it in Paint and zoom in/out, does it do similar stuff ? Could be even worse for the projector case. Scaling an image with LCD text doesn't work well, and especially badly if you scale up/down by some unfriendly fraction. -phil.
Re: Poor quality font rendering
On 8/22/2013 12:59 PM, John Hendrikx wrote: If you want to turn off cleartype in Windows 7, then just turning it off is not sufficient. You need to replace the default font with Tahoma as well as the Windows 7 default font (Segoe UI) sucks without LCD smoothing. I can recommend the cleartype switch program, see here: http://karpolan.com/software/cleartype-switch/ You'll want to keep smooth edges on, but cleartype off. Microsoft document Segoe UI quality as marginal in some non-LCD rendering modes, although I think its better than I first remember from maybe Vista days. -phil.
Re: Poor quality font rendering
On 22/08/2013 21:41, John C. Turnbull wrote: Hi Phil, I was actually aware that LCD text was disabled in this case but what I am saying is that I am seeing similar stark disparities between JavaFX fonts and native fonts even with LCD turned on. I think the screenshot shows what I am talking about though perhaps the quality is poorer than my case because of the LCD issue. The point is that there are still differences no matter what I do and to me at least these differences are very, very obvious. I am trying to establish if what we have now is as good as it gets or if things are going to improve. Also, it's clear from this thread that not everyone agrees on what looks good. It would seem that John H is concerned only with the weird '2' and feels that grayscale text is better than LCD text whereas I am more concerned with resembling native rendering. I made new screenshots with different combinations of settings if you wish to compare those. The strange 2 is what jumped out at me as something that changed recently, but on closer inspection I see many bolded glyphs that look poor in the original screenshot: The 1 has a rather big top edge. The H is thicker in one leg than the other. The s has a thick right curve. The / in top bar looks uneven. The o, 0, 6, 9 and 5 glyphs hardly look bold at all. I think the LCD smoothed versions looks quite good on my regular LCD monitor -- the problem is that it doesn't look good on the projector I'm using so I just turned it off for that. Oh.. I forgot to say this, but... Screenshots taken with LCD smoothing on are always gonna end up looking different on different monitors... if for example your monitor has slightly different spacing or a different order of the subpixels (or you rotated it), then the screenshot will look wierd. I prefer to keep LCD smoothing off as I make screenshots / videos regularly and I donot know on what system they'll be viewed on. So if one of shots has particularly bad colored fringes, it is likely you have a monitor that has a different configuration than mine. --John On 23/08/2013, at 5:21, Phil Racephilip.r...@oracle.com wrote: John T, Per a couple of earlier emails in this thread John H is deliberately disabling LCD text so has grey scale, hence you can't compare directly with a native app since they all use LCD. Any comparison has to be 1. Using the same string 2. Rendered in the same fashion : LCD or greyscale, hinted/unhinted. 3. Using the same font (face, size etc) 4. Using the same colours (fgbg) and watch out for the UI controls - they used to tweak your text colour so that (eg) black became dark grey, reducing contrast which reduced legibility, thus also invalidating any test. I am not sure if this is still the case, but contrast is very important for text and you should make sure its as high as possible. -phil. On 8/22/2013 11:35 AM, John C. Turnbull wrote: Am I the only one who looks at that screenshot and thinks that the fonts look really bad and obviously different from a native app? Its not just the Plot section, its all text on the screen. This is what I am talking about. I wouldn't even describe the differences as subtle as to me there is a dramatic difference in quality. Can this be fixed or are JavaFX apps always going to stand out for all the wrong reasons like this? On 23/08/2013, at 0:05, John Hendrikxhj...@xs4all.nl wrote: Those are all normal controls, the plot section is just a Label for example. On 22/08/2013 13:39, John C. Turnbull wrote: 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-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of John Hendrikx Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2013 17:29 To: openjfx-dev@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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
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
Re: Poor quality font rendering
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
