Keep GDI font rendering as an alternative to DirectWrite

[Pál Tamás Ács]

Dear Chromium Developers,

More than two months ago Ilya Kulshin and Scott Graham created a patch that would remove support for GDI font rendering completely from the Chromium codebase.

https://codereview.chromium.org/1919573002
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=579678

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/1acd6b6af8c9ef59fe7227faff4585310e5c2ec8

They've done this without any direct consent from users and with a reason like since we have already sorted out support for XP/Vista, we don't need GDI anymore. They've done this despite the fact that a lot of users wanted to get rid of DirectWrite after it became default in the stable releases of Chromium and Chrome. They've done this despite the fact that GDI is still fully supported in Windows 7 which is the most widely-used (and also the most mature, most stable) Windows today. Windows 7 is officially supported by Microsoft. As a consequence, GDI is also officially supported by Microsoft as it's part of the operating system. Thus, GDI is supposed to be supported and offered as a choice like any other platform-specific settings in Chromium. Furthermore, DirectWrite is incapable of giving the same look and feel as GDI, as you don't need glasses to see this in the comparison below: For those who prefer grayscale anti-aliasing, this means a serious degradation in quality and readability.

Just compare this sample image ... (DirectWrite)

... to this (GDI).

Make sure you view the sample images in their original size.

Of course you can turn on ClearType, however there are people (even if we are a minority) who do not prefer ClearType and any kind of sub-pixel rendering. ClearType uses sub-pixels for smoothing font edges which is basically violating the original purpose of sub-pixels and by this it pollutes the color space that results in color fringes and bleeding. There are many displays with different (mostly lower) contrast ratios on which you simply can't tune ClearType well, it will always bleed or have noticeable color fringes. Also, for notebooks used with different backlight brightness levels (day/night) sometimes there is no universal settings without noticeable bleeding or color fringes. Even though the ClearType rendering of GDI is poorer than of DirectWrite, at grayscale rendering the winner is definitely GDI and it has done a really good job for several years: sharp, well-hinted fonts and even sharper edges (even sharper than DirectWrite with ClearType on).

Since DirectWrite was introduced, a lot of people have complained about less readable fonts, seeking to disable DirectWrite and switch back to the good old GDI. See a few of these topics below.

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=405445

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/Q6QGBRvULbQ

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/xoav3jpRMPc

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/VStr-JaPbwQ

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/bkFBZbeMklk

https://forums.opera.com/discussion/1873864/disabling-option-to-disable-directwrite-font-rendering-in-opera-beta-39-0-2256-15#Item_5 (Opera is Chromium-based)

https://forums.opera.com/discussion/1865224/opera-blurry-fonts/p1

https://forums.opera.com/discussion/1853763/changed-fonts-in-some-sites/p1

https://vivaldi.net/en-US/forum/vivaldi-browser/2237-font-rendering-in-vivaldi-is-an-issue (Vivaldi is Chromium-based)

http://superuser.com/questions/803637/how-to-disable-directwrite-in-google-chrome-37

http://www.ngohq.com/news/25137-how-to-disable-directwrite-in-google-chrome.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/4me0ol/cant_find_a_way_to_disable_directwrite_after_the/

http://www.trilithium.com/johan/2015/03/chrome-directwrite-2/

https://superusersome.wordpress.com/2015/05/28/how-to-disable-directwrite-in-google-chrome-37/

http://www.magpcss.org/ceforum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=13765

http://www.teamfortress.tv/21248/disabling-directwrite-in-chrome

(... and many-many more)

However, the purpose of keeping GDI is not about preferring DirectWrite or not. It's about free choice. The free choice that is being taken away from us right now.

Please revert the patches and keep the Disable DirectWrite option, at least while Windows 7 is still officially supported (until 2020).

Best,

Pál Tamás Ács

[PhistucK]

Do not start new threads about the same thing. Reply to the first thread you started.

Starting new threads will not make it come back any more than replying to existing threads (and even that...).

☆PhistucK

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[Pál Tamás Ács]

My previous thread about this was not in the dev channel. It was in discuss. And it is also being ignored. Of course, I have no intention to flood all the discussion groups with the same topic. Here it is just much more summarized and more likely at the right group.

[PhistucK]

chromium-discuss was the right group.

That and the product forums.

☆PhistucK

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Pál Tamás Ács <palik...@gmail.com> wrote:

My previous thread about this was not in the dev channel. It was in discuss. And it is also being ignored. Of course, I have no intention to flood all the discussion groups with the same topic. Here it is just much more summarized and more likely at the right group.

--

[Justin Schuh]

I disagree that your previous email was ignored, but I realize you were unsatisfied with the response you received. In the interest of not resurrecting another thread, I can respond here with the major reasons why we no longer support GDI fonts in Chrome/Chromium (although Phistuck is absolutely correct that this is not the forum for discussion or advocacy).

1. Based on our feedback channels, the overwhelming majority of users either prefer DirectWrite font rendering or simply don't notice a difference. I know that many of us personally prefer DirectWrite, even in the examples you provided above and on the previous thread. And as screen resolutions continue to grow denser, DirectWrite is increasingly more compelling.
2. GDI exposes a tremendous amount of kernel attack surface directly to Web content, with GDI fonts being the most dangerous aspect by far. So, dropping GDI fonts eliminated Chrome's last GDI dependency, making Chrome dramatically safer against real-world exploits (see: DisallowWin32kSystemCalls and DisableNonSystemFonts for sandbox improvements).
3. Microsoft is phasing out GDI font rendering in favor of DirectWrite, with all power, performance, and quality improvements going to DirectWrite. Meanwhile, GDI has been in maintenance mode for years.
4. We work hard to avoid the excessive maintenance and testing burden imposed by divergent code paths in core functionality. And our metrics showed that the GDI code path was enabled by a small minority of users.

Given the points above, we simply couldn't make any reasonable case for maintaining GDI support. I agree that some confusion may have resulted from the transition period being longer than anticipated. However, that's because we had to work through the Vista and XP deprecations, ensure internationalization and fallback worked properly, resolve outstanding performance issues, and get rendering to a point we were happy with. I'm also sorry that you dislike the DirectWrite rendering, but perhaps you now appreciate that the decision was carefully considered and well founded, even if it's not one that you personally agree with.

At this point I think all of the key reasons and concerns have been stated. And since this really is the wrong place for this discussion, I do not intend on replying further, and hope we can end the thread here.

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 8:55 AM, Pál Tamás Ács <palik...@gmail.com> wrote:

My previous thread about this was not in the dev channel. It was in discuss. And it is also being ignored. Of course, I have no intention to flood all the discussion groups with the same topic. Here it is just much more summarized and more likely at the right group.

--

[Pál Tamás Ács]

You are the first one with a reasonable answer, beyond the "it works for me, it looks good for me" ignorant crap. I really appreciate this, thank you, really. I understand that you would like me to end the discussion on this forum but let me at least react to your thoughts.

1. Based on other feedback channels, a lot of people notice the difference, see the forum links I provided.

2. If you have figured out the whole sandboxing architecture of Chrome, you could have figured out this one as well. It is only the case that you don't want to, because it is "not worth the effort".

3. Even if it is in maintenance mode, it is supported. And it is a vital part of at least Windows 7. And will be until the EOL of Windows 7. So it could be supported and relied on.

4. I don't really have words for this. A billion dollar company like Google could allocate tremendous resources that would be sufficient even for this purpose.

It is not exactly the problem that you are removing GDI. It is the problem that DirectWrite implementation in Chrome can't do the same. For example, on Linux I can set up X11 to provide the same style of anti-aliasing as GDI. But DirectWrite really can't do the same. It comes with only grayscale and subpixel rendering in the way Microsoft thought it would be good for everyone. But it's not good for everyone and even annoying for some. And even if some snobbish "buy the new" maniacs have 4K monitors where everything is sharp (even with DirectWrite) due to high PPI and high zoom levels, the vast majority of users still work with 5-6-year-old or even older computers with standard PPI screens (80-100). On these screens DirectWrite fonts look blurry and less readable.

Now your decision left me (and all others who can't get used to ClearType or the blurry fonts of DirectWrite) with the following options in the current situation.

• Use an older version of Chrome where DirectWrite can be disabled. Unfortunately it will become more and more vulnerable to hackers as time goes by.
  
• Use an older version of Opera for Windows XP (that is patched with security fixes), so I'm not going to be hacked with that much probability.
  
• Switch to Firefox which is slower and eats more CPU for everything but still supports GDI.
  
• Reinstall my whole system and switch to Linux where I have the complete freedom to adjust font rendering and anti-aliasing methods in X11 (even on a font-by-font basis).

Considering the four alternatives above, only the last one would be good for the long term. However, I have a lot of Windows applications which I can't run on Linux (not even with Wine), so you have probably guessed that I'm not going to switch.

So the final conclusion: You have just left Windows users alone with blurry and less readable fonts, without any reasonable alternative or customization options that would let us have the same grayscale rendering font quality that GDI provided. 

At least you could have included the Freetype library which can also do well-hinted and sharp grayscale rendering, like GDI ... or some alternative, or whatever. But no.

And this is the biggest problem. The ignorance is the biggest problem. That you (or people like Ilya Kulshin) think it's just a minority the people who don't like it, so it is not a problem. Yes, it is a problem.

[PhistucK]

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 11:57 PM, Pál Tamás Ács <palik...@gmail.com> wrote:

1. Based on other feedback channels, a lot of people notice the difference, see the forum links I provided.

​Count them. How many?​ It is a small minority.

 

2. If you have figured out the whole sandboxing architecture of Chrome, you could have figured out this one as well. It is only the case that you don't want to, because it is "not worth the effort".

​They had to live with GDI for about eight years. Of course it was worth the effort and they probably did what they could​ and they still had security issues as a result. That means it is a dangerous code path and one that should be removed if it is pretty much unused (which is the current state of the world).

 

3. Even if it is in maintenance mode, it is supported. And it is a vital part of at least Windows 7. And will be until the EOL of Windows 7. So it could be supported and relied on.

It will probably be supported forever, since with Windows, you can usually take a Windows 1.0 application (well, maybe a Windows 3.11 application, I have not tried anything earlier than that) and it will still work on Windows 10. (at least, it did on Windows 7)​. This is not a reason to support it in an actively developed application, though.

 

4. I don't really have words for this. A billion dollar company like Google could allocate tremendous resources that would be sufficient even for this purpose.

Google is still a business. Why would it invest time on something that a very small sub-percentage portion of the users use?​

Google shut down Google Reader, even though it had a few millions of users. I was very disappointed, but this is life. It is a business. Keep that in mind.

☆PhistucK

[Pál Tamás Ács]

Talking about security, I've been using Chrome for 5 years now - with GDI rendering. Never had any security issue with it. I have never gotten hacked, infected. If GDI rendering is not default and can only be turned on by this "small minority", then it won't pose any security threat to the vast majority anyways.

The bug reports that initiated the removal (linked in my initial posts) are not based on any usage statistics at all. They are based on the developer idealism that GDI has to be removed because why maintain the good old if the brand new can do it. This might be a brilliant idea, but the only problem is that it can't do the same.

I don't know whether this is worth more words from my side. When this change reaches the stable branch, all users will get automatically updated with GDI removed. Then we'll see what kind of "minority" is this, not preferring blurry fonts to sharper ones. I hope developers change their mind then. Or maybe they just present the same arrogance and ignorance that Google did with Google Reader. I don't know. I hope that free choice wins and GDI will remain (or there will be an alternative that renders the same fonts).

[Kai Kon]

Am Freitag, 8. Juli 2016 22:57:27 UTC+2 schrieb Pál Tamás Ács:

• Use an older version of Chrome where DirectWrite can be disabled. Unfortunately it will become more and more vulnerable to hackers as time goes by.
  
• Use an older version of Opera for Windows XP (that is patched with security fixes), so I'm not going to be hacked with that much probability.
  
• Switch to Firefox which is slower and eats more CPU for everything but still supports GDI.
  
• Reinstall my whole system and switch to Linux where I have the complete freedom to adjust font rendering and anti-aliasing methods in X11 (even on a font-by-font basis).

Thank you very much for that list! I'm one of the unfortunate 20% or so that gets headache and nausea from ClearType/ DirectWrite. I'm stuck with Windows 7, a lot of reading in the browser on a far from 4K screen at work. I just downloadet Opera 36 and hope for long security support. 

[Pál Tamás Ács]

@Kai Kon

You are welcome. I am not sure if Opera 36 would keep its main version on operating systems newer than XP. You must try that out. What I'm sure is that Opera developers are at least as much ignorant about DirectWrite vs. GDI as Chromium developers. I think your best option would be to switch to Firefox. If you have at least second generation Intel i5, you'll probably be fine with its speed. While Firefox performs slower than Chromium, it focuses a lot more on freedom of choice and customizability. You can even adjust ClearType and grayscale rendering independently of the operating system in about:config (similar to chrome://flags). Also it has a dedicated reader mode and an excellent add-on in which you can fine-tune anti-aliasing settings and it has a lot of options. Shame that Chromium developers are taking away even the remaining small amount of choices.

@PhistucK

Don't you think it's kind of funny that "the minority" finds a thread like this, even when "not on the right" forum (in less than 24 hours)? :P

[PhistucK]

Wait, why are you not disabling ClearType altogether in the operating system level, since it causes you nausea? When it is off, the text (using Arial) does not look blurry.

Web fonts look pretty bad, though. :( I created a small extension that simply changes the font to Arial.

☆PhistucK

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[PhistucK]

Nope, not funny at all, people do not search the group, they search the web.

☆PhistucK

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[Pál Tamás Ács]

Thanks to the removal of the GDI support, Chrome will use DirectWrite that will render blurry fonts as you can see the example in my initial post. The font is Arial. Just take look at the first example. This is how blurry Arial will become when GDI removal reaches the stable branch. It has already reached beta. That screenshot was taken using a beta version, on Windows 7, with ClearType off system-wide.

Your extension will not help much. No extension will as no extension can act as an alternative font-rendering engine. Arial will be rendered almost as blurry as other web fonts. This is exactly the problem with DirectWrite. That you can't get sharp fonts out of it.

[PhistucK]

Interesting. I will take a look at the canary when I can.

☆PhistucK

[PhistucK]

Oh, you probably did not disable "Smooth edges of screen fonts" (an operating system level setting, under Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings > Performance > Settings).

Enabling only that (and not ClearType) never worked (it made the text blurry), unfortunately. I think I asked about this and got a WontFix, but I am not sure. This is disappointing, indeed.

Disabling "Smooth edges of screen fonts" makes the blurriness go away (though web fonts look pretty bad, like I mentioned, which my extension fixes by changing to Arial).

Note that this is better than Internet Explorer if I am not mistaken, that simply disregards any preference and shows blurry text.

☆PhistucK

[Pál Tamás Ács]

The problem is not font-smoothing. The problem is the font-smoothing that DirectWrite does. Disabling Smooth edges of screen fonts will make all fonts on the whole system look pixelated, without any smoothing. As some font faces need some level of smoothing to look readable, this is definitely not a solution. This is a weak workaround with lots of negative side-effects and almost with the same level of quality degradation as DirectWrite in Chrome, but system-wide.

GDI font-smoothing has always done a perfect job. As you can see in my example (first post), it anti-aliases the bold Arial (way better than DirectWrite) but does not anti-alias non-bold Arial. Both fonts are really sharp, unlike any of DirectWrite.

[TheTimmant]

Same problem here. Fonts looks very bad without GDI. Please add it back.

[Pál Tamás Ács]

Interesting (or rather disgusting?) fact: Google has removed this thread from the search hits. Two days ago when you searched for GDI alternative, you got this Google Groups thread as your first hit. Now it has disappeared and there is no direct hit even if you search for "Keep GDI font rendering as an alternative to DirectWrite" as an exact match (with quotes). Meanwhile, other topics like "Hotlist-OpenBugWithCL causes me useless work" have a direct hit. A direct hit is when a search hit gets you right to the content you searched for.

[PhistucK]

​It happens with other quotes as well, for things Google has no interest in burying, so, no, not disgusting.

Please, do not divert the thread off topic.​

☆PhistucK

On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 12:47 PM, Pál Tamás Ács <palik...@gmail.com> wrote:

Interesting (or rather disgusting?) fact: Google has removed this thread from the search hits. Two days ago when you searched for GDI alternative, you got this Google Groups thread as your first hit. Now it has disappeared and there is no direct hit even if you search for "Keep GDI font rendering as an alternative to DirectWrite" as an exact match (with quotes). Meanwhile, other topics like "Hotlist-OpenBugWithCL causes me useless work" have a direct hit. A direct hit is when a search hit gets you right to the content you searched for.

--

[Kai Kon]

A lot of people like ClearType/ DirectWrite- and a significant minority does gets problems with it. A study done i 2006 (https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~ct/chi_p618.pdf) shows that about 2/3 of the participants read faster, and 1/3 slower with ClearType. I'm working in Neuroscience, and I suppose this is the result of subtle differences in our visual systems. We just see things differently. I personally can't understand why anybody could prefer Cleartype- and vice versa. 

After all 1/3  is a big minority- and it would be a good thing do serve it's needs by allowing to choose GDI-like font-rendering. 

[Christian Biesinger]

Since you can disable ClearType with or without DirectWrite, that seems unrelated?

-Christian

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 3:21 PM, Kai Kon <kai.k...@gmail.com> wrote:

A lot of people like ClearType/ DirectWrite- and a significant minority does gets problems with it. A study done i 2006 (https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~ct/chi_p618.pdf) shows that about 2/3 of the participants read faster, and 1/3 slower with ClearType. I'm working in Neuroscience, and I suppose this is the result of subtle differences in our visual systems. We just see things differently. I personally can't understand why anybody could prefer Cleartype- and vice versa. 

After all 1/3  is a big minority- and it would be a good thing do serve it's needs by allowing to choose GDI-like font-rendering. 

[PhistucK]

There are three states - no font smoothing, font smoothing, ClearType. The third is the most problematic one. The first looks pixelated. The second looks best to that third, I guess (me, included).

However, Chrome does not support the second (since the transition to DirectWrite). Only the first or the third.

☆PhistucK

[Ilya Kulshin]

If you enable antialiasing (font smoothing) in Windows, then run the ClearType tuner and uncheck the "enable cleartype" checkbox, you will get grayscale antialiasing in Chrome. Or do you mean something else by font smoothing?

[PhistucK]

Yes, I meant that.

But I do not notice a difference between checking the ClearType checkbox and not, when font smoothing is enabled. :(

Both of them are unreadable with DirectWrite. Before DirectWrite, doing the same (disabling ClearType while still keeping font smoothing enabled) was readable.

​(Windows 7, if it matters)​

☆PhistucK

[Elliott Sprehn]

What does Edge do?

[PhistucK]

I have not tried Edge (Windows 7 here), but Internet Explorer 11 ignores my settings and the fonts are blurry (I doubt Edge is any different)

☆PhistucK

[Pál Tamás Ács]

The removal of GDI support has just reached the stable version of Google Chrome. This means, everyone who gets updated to the latest version of Chrome, will have blurry DirectWrite fonts as their only option.

Here is the response from those who are not satisifed with blurry DirectWrite fonts that are only good for developers living their blind idealism and some graphics designers equipped with high-end displays.

https://www.change.org/p/google-inc-bring-sharp-fonts-back-in-google-chrome-disable-directwrite

Please sign this petition and show Google that we are opposing the withdrawal of our freedom of choice. Please share this petition to reach more people who would like to express their opinion.

[Kirill Pankin]

+1 for Pál's petition. 

Abandoning of the Disable DirectWrite option is wrong, bad, incorrect and impolite act because not so many people have high DPI displays.

[Colin Richardson]

DirectWrite also chooses the incorrect font. I have Halvetica Ultra Condensed installed (for work on a project).

When Since Halvetica Ultra Condensed is not Halvetica, GDI correctly ignores it, and goes on to the next font in the list.

But DirectWrite decides it is close enough, lets use it.. Even though Halvetica Ultra Condensed is pretty much useless as a readable web font. Only useful for design work.

DirectWrite is just flawed and currently unfit for purpose.

[PhistucK]

I am not sure this (picking the wrong font) is the intended result and could probably be changed.

You can search crbug.com for an existing issue and star it. If you cannot find one, file a new issue using the "New issue" link on the same page.

Please, do not add a "+1" or "Me too" or "Confirmed" (or similar) comment. It just wastes the time of Chrome engineers and sends unnecessary e-mails to all of the people who starred the issue.

You can reply with a link to the found or created issue and might get triaged (and fixed) faster.

Thank you.

☆PhistucK

--

[Pál Tamás Ács]

Thanks for your interest in the petition.

We have 114 signatures on the petition that 1000 people have visited so far. This means, that at least 10% of the users who visited the petition say "no thanks" to the blurry fonts of DirectWrite and want their freedom of choice back. If ~100 from ~1000 users oppose DirectWrite, this gives us a non-representative estimation of all other users who do not know about the petition. Since Chrome is used by ~1 billion people all around the world, there might be a hundred million people who would probably oppose DirectWrite.

... and developers are still being ignorant.

Please help spread the word by sharing/promoting the petition so that it can reach as many people as possible.

[PhistucK]

By the way, creating (or finding) an issue at crbug.com and getting people to star it should be just as efficient, if not more. Even if it is marked as WontFix, if a lot of people star it, it matters.

☆PhistucK

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[Ahmed Niaz Morshed]

Why your ass is getting burnt? Only people without any aesthetics can remove GDI and bring in s*it like DirectWrite! You people have no taste. And here you came talking about organization of your group threads. 

On Friday, July 8, 2016 at 9:51:36 PM UTC+6, PhistucK wrote:

Do not start new threads about the same thing. Reply to the first thread you started.

Starting new threads will not make it come back any more than replying to existing threads (and even that...).

☆PhistucK

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[Paul]

Hi all

Just been exploring Windows 10 Home on a new box I bought. In its vanilla version font rendering overall is poor. MS in addressing this in the Creator Update have a fix on a per application basis. It only works if the application uses GDI. So please Google people bring back GDI so I don't strain my eyes. 

Thanks

Paul