[commit-cp] [bugs #11316] Swing: font rendering is 'off'

[Thomas Zander]

This mail is an automated notification from the bugs tracker
 of the project: classpath.

/**************************************************************************/
[bugs #11316] Latest Modifications:

Changes by: 
                Thomas Zander <address@hidden>
'Date: 
                Wed 12/22/2004 at 10:09 (GMT)

------------------ Additional Follow-up Comments ----------------------------
I've tried to debug this and found the following:
The font set is:
javax.swing.plaf.FontUIResource[family=Helvetica,name=Helvetica,style=plain,size=12]

When I look at my system using kcontrols-fontinstaller I see that I have the 
default Helvetical that comes with X11, as well as a propiatairy postscript 
version installed.
When I look using Gimp (1.2) I have 5 foundries and dozens of styles installed 
of Helvetica.  To many to find out which is being picked.

Why are the anti-aliasing algoritms from freetype not used?  They are used on 
KDE (easy to spot since the extra pixels are not all black, and it just looks 
better).






/**************************************************************************/
[bugs #11316] Full Item Snapshot:

URL: <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=11316>
Project: classpath
Submitted by: Thomas Zander
On: Tue 12/14/2004 at 18:05

Category:  classpath
Severity:  5 - Average
Resolution:  None
Privacy:  Public
Assigned to:  None
Status:  Open
Platform Version:  None


Summary:  Swing: font rendering is 'off'

Original Submission:  The default font set on my machine for Swing applications 
is quite ugly.  There is nice anti-aliasing done, but the kerning is completely 
off.
See attached snapshot of some radiobuttons.  If you zoom in you should notice 
that various characters 'touch' each other.

Notice that if I set another font for one widget, then that one renders fine.  
Seems to be a bad default..

Follow-up Comments
------------------


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed 12/22/2004 at 10:09       By: Thomas Zander <zander>
I've tried to debug this and found the following:
The font set is:
javax.swing.plaf.FontUIResource[family=Helvetica,name=Helvetica,style=plain,size=12]

When I look at my system using kcontrols-fontinstaller I see that I have the 
default Helvetical that comes with X11, as well as a propiatairy postscript 
version installed.
When I look using Gimp (1.2) I have 5 foundries and dozens of styles installed 
of Helvetica.  To many to find out which is being picked.

Why are the anti-aliasing algoritms from freetype not used?  They are used on 
KDE (easy to spot since the extra pixels are not all black, and it just looks 
better).

-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue 12/21/2004 at 21:03       By: graydon hoare <graydon>
well, there's two issues at work here:

first, classpath doesn't ship fonts, period. it could do so in the future -- if 
classpath decides this is a good idea or whatever -- but it currently doesn't, 
so there's no analogous "default" font for us to "guarantee" at the moment. so 
if you want to discuss that you should probably move it to the classpath 
mailing list and ask. the current strategy is to rely on the native font system 
and "hope for the best". I don't have a really strong preference on this matter 
either way. it's doable. we might need to use slightly different fonts than 
sun, for legal reasons, but there are a few free fonts floating around we could 
bundle (we could bundle icon pixmaps etc. as well)

the second issue, however, is that screenshot looks like it's rendering the 
fonts just .. wrong. ugly. like it found a font and it's painting it 
incorrectly. probably a bug. if you could post your test program and the font 
file it's finding, as well as your /etc/fonts/fonts.conf or whatever fontconfig 
is reading on your system, I'd appreciate it. if I can reproduce it I can see 
if it's a real font rendering bug.


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue 12/21/2004 at 20:42       By: Thomas Zander <zander>
The default font setting is a L&F thing; not a native-toolkit thing.  As 
designed in Swing.  Sun ships a bitmapped font for this goal (called dialog).
If you were talking about a AWT-level-L&F, I'd agree this is invalid, but I 
have my doubts this is not something for classpath in the Swing-default-L&F.

I could be wrong; lets see what Graydon has to say on this.

-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue 12/21/2004 at 20:23       By: Michael Koch <mkoch>
oh, I totally for got to read that sentence. I currently think about closing 
this bug as "Invalid" as the default has to be configured via GTK and this is 
outside the scope of GNU classpath to work with insane GTK configuration. On 
the other side each runtime allows configuring fonts in fonts.properties ...

I will ask Graydon to comment on this.

-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue 12/21/2004 at 20:16       By: Thomas Zander <zander>
I though that the anti-aliasing part would give away I indeed have cairo 
installed and am running a nice Graphics2D classpath.

MM: your comment ignores the last line in the original submission, perhaps you 
an change the subject to more match the rest of the report..

-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue 12/21/2004 at 19:59       By: Michael Koch <mkoch>
For nice font rendering you need to install cairo CVS and enable its usage 
explicitely during configure time. When cairo becomes standard we will built it 
by default. Unfortunately cairo is a fast moving target and not very stable yet.






File Attachments
-------------------

-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue 12/14/2004 at 18:05  Name: fontproblem.png  Size: 7.96KB   By: zander

http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/download.php?item_id=11316&amp;item_file_id=1974






For detailed info, follow this link:
<http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=11316>

_______________________________________________
  Message sent via/by Savannah
  http://savannah.gnu.org/