Font Rendering in Windows

[michael....@gmail.com]

I know Windows font rendering is naturally inferior to Linux or OS X, but the font in my application is terrible when opening in Windows.

I've tried css smoothing techniques that helped, especially in Windows 7, but it is still unacceptable and I imagine this has come up for many using node-webkit and there may be a work around.

I can't seem to find a solution that fixes this, so hopefully someone can point me in the right direction. 

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Patrick Klug]

Funny you would say 'naturally inferior' when Windows (via DirectWrite) has features like bi-directional antialiased sub-pixel rendering.

Just open up a web page in IE 10 and see how wonderful the text is. The issue is not with Windows but with Chromium because they decide not to use any of the wonderful font technology available on Windows.

But snarky comment aside, I feel your pain. I wish I could have IE10 text quality in node-webkit...

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[michael....@gmail.com]

How do you claim this is an issue with Chromium and not Windows?

The font in my application looks perfect when ran in OSX or Linux, but Windows looks terrible.

This is only an issue in Windows. I have found articles on how Windows will render some web fonts poorly and ways to combat it by changing settings on the actual Windows machine, which obviously is not an option.

[Roger]

Does your page render poorly in Chromium as well?

--
Roger

[Patrick Klug]

> How do you claim this is an issue with Chromium and not Windows?

Because Chromium, AFAIK, still uses the outdated GDI technology to render text on Windows while other browsers such as IE or Firefox have long upgraded  to use DirectWrite which I mentioned earlier, has excellent font rendering capabilities. bi-directional antialiased sub-pixel rendering is awesome, especially with animated text.

There was a statement that Google would love to move towards DirectWrite. You can read some more info here:

http://www.quora.com/Google-Chrome/When-is-DirectWrite-coming-to-Chrome

Anyway, I definitely see a major quality difference when I run my game in IE vs. Chrome. IE wins out by leaps and bounds.

[michael....@gmail.com]

I will have to get back to you about how it renders in Chromium in Windows here shortly.

It may be completely irrelevant here because my application is targeted for use in Windows by running the .exe, so I believe the browser differences are not the issue here.

When I saw the application looks fine in Linux and OSX I am referring to when I open the built .nw. The application also looks fine in Chrome while developing, but the issue is specifically when opening the .exe in Windows.

[Roger]

<michael....@gmail.com> writes:

> I will have to get back to you about how it renders in Chromium in Windows
> here shortly.
>
> It may be completely irrelevant here because my application is targeted for
> use in Windows by running the .exe, so I believe the browser differences
> are not the issue here.

Thanks. Since node-webkit is based on Chromium, I'm just wondering it is
something works well in Chromium but introduced with bugs in
node-webkit.

> When I saw the application looks fine in Linux and OSX I am referring to
> when I open the built .nw. The application also looks fine in Chrome while
> developing, but the issue is specifically when opening the .exe in
> Windows.

If it works fine with Chromium, could you please provide a sample of the
page rendered poorly?


--
Roger

[Chris Price]

The short answer is to use an SVG font. Details and a follow up post: http://www.fontspring.com/blog/smoother-web-font-rendering-chrome

[michael....@gmail.com]

I'm seeing significant improvements as a result of using an .svg file. 

Beforehand, the application rendered poorly in Chrome so I do not believe it is a bug specific with node-webkit.

[pareto...@gmail.com]

Chromium font rendering is notoriously problematic on Windows, but an update is on its way. You can follow the current status on their issue tracker.
I woudln't expect it to land in the stable channel for quite some time, though.

[Matthias Götzke]

as you know for sure by now .. directwrite is supported in chrome 37+ .. sadly the new node-webkit 0.11 rc1 (based on 38)  does not seem to have that enabled

On Monday, October 21, 2013 1:12:29 AM UTC+2, michael....@gmail.com wrote:

[Adriano Brandão]

Hi Mathias.

I've tested 0.11RC1 on Win64 and the new font rendering is working really great. I haven't tried yet on Win32 although.

Best,

Adriano.

[mgt...@gmail.com]

I am testing here on my surface pro 3 (high dpi) running win8.1 64. Both versions of nw 32 and 64. Both are quite unusable. I am judging by sharpness which is just not acceptable.

What are you actually comparing against ? Are you testing on high dpi screens (not sure there is a big difference on normal dpi displays) ? Are you comparing to regular chrome ? Etc...

Sorry for these questions, but obviously something is off for me here.

---

From: Adriano Brandão
Sent: ‎31.‎10.‎2014 03:50
To: node-...@googlegroups.com
Cc: michael....@gmail.com
Subject: [node-webkit] Re: Font Rendering in Windows

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[ibo.r...@gmail.com]

Btw. this issue is also related to https://groups.google.com/d/msg/node-webkit/cG12axst5k0/GdGWFYUur-QJ

I would strongly suggest enabling these options in the build script on since they would lead to better UI...  for all apps. 

They are already enabled by default in current Chrome (stable) and in atomshell.

[Adriano Brandão]

Hi Mathias,

I have only tested on normal DPI systems. The new font rendering is much better:

old:

new:

But, all in all, Mac rendering remains the best:

Cheers!