Text rendering Skia vs Gdiplus

[Cedric]

I'm updating some existing code base which is using Gdiplus for rendering and replacing it for Skia instead. I saw that there's quite some difference on how the ani-aliasing is done between Skia and Gdiplus. This results in the text being displayed which looks less good when using Skia compared to Gdiplus.

(Left is Skia, right is Gdiplus). It's particularly clear when you zoom on the text:

(first one is Skia, second one is Gdiplus).

I used the font manager based on DirectWrite (SkFontMgr_New_DirectWrite) and draw the text through the SkCanvas::drawSimpleText method (with anti-aliasing turned on).

I'm currently also not using any of the Skia extensions, so this is the content of my args.gn file:

clang_win = "C:\Program Files\LLVM" is_debug=false is_official_build=true is_component_build=true skia_use_system_expat=false skia_use_system_libjpeg_turbo=false skia_use_system_libpng=false skia_use_system_libwebp=false skia_use_system_zlib=false skia_use_system_icu=false skia_use_system_harfbuzz=false



Is there a way to improve the rendering of the text?

[bungeman]

If you're looking for subpixel anti-aliasing, you will need to use `SkFont.setEdging(SkFont::Edging::kSubpixelAntiAlias)` and set the actual pixel geometry on your destination surface with something like `SkSurfaceProps(0, kRGB_H_SkPixelGeometry)` when the surface is created. Also, you will probably want to set `SkFont.setSubpixel(true)` and possibly change other font settings when drawing.

[John Wiseman]

It may be more complicated than you thought to match windows' native font rendering:

[Meta] Windows font contrast [40037626] - Chromium