Fix font aliasing

[Otiel]

I'm not sure if it's aliasing or something else but some fonts look choppy or clipped.

For instance, on this context menu, all characters of the same "value" are not rendered the same way and some are easier to read than others (look at the r, l, F...):

Or on this screenshot, look at the commit messages and paths:

Are the fonts supporting ClearType?

[vitalyster]

@SylwesterZarebski interesting. Context menu are mostly ok except items with submenus. When item have submenu ("Interactive rebase ..." in commits, or "Tracking..." in branch tree) - it is "blurry"

[SylwesterZarebski]

It is subpixel AA in both submenus, but i think you just spot this horizontal half-pixel off what @ma-bjo spotted. Probably this is main problem with blurriness, but with subpixel AA it is more noticeable on zoom - look at f or i letters or numbers (W10/4K/150%):

Another one on another system (W10/WQHD/100%):

[SylwesterZarebski]

You can ignore above comment. It looks like Windows font rendering behaviour, very few applications has better font rendering and it looks like all of them has own font rendering (i.e. Firefox with natural/natural symmetric setting). Some application has better contrast on fonts, but i do not know if this is possible in WPF.

[SylwesterZarebski]

Mostly Fork has very nice AA, only few places could be changed like history window - left list is mostly greyscale AA.

[DanPristupov]

@SylwesterZarebski can you make a screenshot, please? What monitor do you use, what resolution and DPI?

Does anyone else see that issue?

[SylwesterZarebski]

It looks like this: I've made color adjustment to better show area of greyscale AA on the left.

PS. It is very minor issue, thank You for great work :).

[DanPristupov]

@SylwesterZarebski we just released 1.83 update. Please check for updates.

[babanga]

Is there a way to completely disable antialiasing? TextFormattingMode.Display surely does the trick, would be super great to have it in the settings.

[SylwesterZarebski]

@SylwesterZarebski we just released 1.83 update. Please check for updates.

Thanks a lot, now it is fine. Last greyscale AA i've found is in update window, but it is very minor:

[ma-bjo]

Is there a way to completely disable antialiasing? TextFormattingMode.Display surely does the trick, would be super great to have it in the settings.

Applications should not have their own configuration for antialiasing, they should just follow the configuration that the user has done in Windows.

[babanga]

Applications should not have their own configuration for antialiasing, they should just follow the configuration that the user has done in Windows.

I have it completely disabled on my system, because it gives me some eye strain. Especially now when the greyscale is replaced with rainbowish fonts. But WPF doesn't follow the system settings. I've seen other apps having this issue, but there's no solution for closed source.

[SylwesterZarebski]

TextFormattingMode.Display do not disable AA nor obey Windows settings, just set text formatter to use GDI-compatible font metrics, which can make things better or worse depending on your setup. As @babanga has written above, WPF doesn't follow system settings and there is little you can do. One way is to buy very high DPI screen, which minimise AA effects (also subpixel).

[WesselKroos]

Hi @DanPristupov, thanks for all the work you've done so far on improving the readability of text!

However, in 2 places the readability is worse for me with ClearType turned on in Windows 11. Which are the line numbers and the description of hidden lines:

When I compare the AA effect with a similar text in the Google Chrome browser it looks as if the effect is rotated by 180 degrees and over-saturated:

	Fork	Google Chrome
Windows ClearType off	✅	AA is still on?
Windows ClearType on	rotated by 180 degrees & over-saturated?	✅

Could these be reasons why these texts look more blurry in comparison with ClearType turned off?

[SylwesterZarebski]

@WesselKroos : It looks like reversed RGB, thus wrong cleartype. Have You tried dark theme?

[WesselKroos]

@SylwesterZarebski I think you are onto something, looking at dark- vs light mode.

The selected ClearType is the first one in this selection screen, which is sharper on my monitor. I guess that is RGB? because the second ClearType displays a blue line at the left, and a faint yellow line at the right side of the T (the first character):

But dark mode looks way sharper:

Notice how the colors in the filepath src/script/libs/amb... has a clear reversed/rotated AA effect while the linenumbers, description of hidden lines and file contents stay almost the same but should be reversed/rotated:

It looks like the text within this scrollable window has a wrong/reversed/rotated ClearType in light mode:

[SylwesterZarebski]

Very weird. Only Dan could shed some light on this case.