Bug 46817 - Screen font anti-aliasing does not work (Windows)
Summary: Screen font anti-aliasing does not work (Windows)
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: graphics stack (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
4.4.7.2 release
Hardware: x86 (IA32) Windows (All)
: high major
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 97426 (view as bug list)
Depends on: 91946
Blocks: Font-Rendering Kerning
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2012-03-01 04:44 UTC by Stefan Schweizer
Modified: 2022-08-22 23:24 UTC (History)
14 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
screenshot of Win7 in a VM with AA (and cleartype) working nicely ... (76.55 KB, image/png)
2013-05-16 13:46 UTC, Michael Meeks
Details
screenshot comparison of AA (1000.53 KB, application/x-zip-compressed)
2013-05-19 19:48 UTC, Petr Kraus
Details
LO presentation which shows font rendering probems (457.54 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation)
2013-07-06 10:26 UTC, Stefan Schweizer
Details
Uneven character spacing (43.28 KB, image/png)
2013-07-06 10:50 UTC, Stefan Schweizer
Details
Even Character spacing with MS Powerpoint (17.38 KB, image/png)
2013-07-06 10:55 UTC, Stefan Schweizer
Details
Jaggies (393.08 KB, image/jpeg)
2016-01-01 14:55 UTC, shiphen
Details
Screenshot Win10x64 LibreOffice 5.0.4.2 (29.94 KB, image/png)
2016-01-02 16:12 UTC, m_a_riosv
Details
three screenshots (269.74 KB, application/zip)
2016-01-08 17:00 UTC, Zop
Details
Antialiasing is incomplete (8.52 KB, image/png)
2016-10-15 23:09 UTC, Juanjo
Details
Comparison between menu rendering on Audacity, Firefox and Libreoffice (Windows 10) (22.18 KB, image/jpeg)
2018-10-30 10:04 UTC, Edoardo Maria Elidoro
Details
Test of AA using japanese kana with different scaling levels (211.73 KB, application/x-zip-compressed)
2019-05-03 05:38 UTC, NovarthaWoW
Details
Screenshots comparing 6.4.4 and 7.0 displaying Japanese documents (164.84 KB, image/png)
2020-05-24 08:19 UTC, Jun Nogata
Details

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Description Stefan Schweizer 2012-03-01 04:44:02 UTC
Screen font anti-aliasing does not work in Windows if anti-aliasing is set in the settings.
This error or (missing feature) affects all LibreOffice components (Writer, Impress etc).
Comment 1 Stefan Schweizer 2012-03-01 06:45:36 UTC
In addition to the poor quality of the text rendering, LO impress changes the spaces between the characters if you click in a text object or switch to another slide in presentation mode. 
I classified this bug (or feature request if not implemented) as important because this degrades the overall acceptance of LO (cf. e.g the good anti-aliasing in MS Office).
Comment 2 Stefan Schweizer 2012-05-30 22:47:27 UTC
Text rendering seems to have improved in LO V3.5.4.2 (tested with Windows 7 Prof. 64bit) but is still not perfect. There are no more changes of character spaces when moving from one slide to another in LO Impress presentations. But there are still "anomalies" in text rendering when using slide show effects (font rendering is changed somewhat from bold to normal just after finishing of the slide show effect).
Comment 3 Michael Meeks 2013-05-16 13:46:53 UTC
Created attachment 79419 [details]
screenshot of Win7 in a VM with AA (and cleartype) working nicely ...
Comment 4 Michael Meeks 2013-05-16 13:48:11 UTC
This bug appears too unclear to me to be a MAB; for me AA works nicely on Windows (and ~always has). Can you confirm that this still fails to work with 3.6 - and can you give much more iformation:

What version of Windows ? what fonts are you using ? which component are you using ? can you attach a document that is affected ?

Thanks ! :-)
Comment 5 Petr Kraus 2013-05-19 19:48:09 UTC
Created attachment 79546 [details]
screenshot comparison of AA

comparison of AA on and off and PDF output(how I think it's supposed to look).
Done on Windows7 as fullscreen presentation. AA/noAA means antialiasing switched on/off in Impress settings. noDPI means it is run without DPI scaling otherwise it is run on with 133% DPI scaling and compatibility flag "Disable display scaling on high DPI" set.
AA1 - extra horrible result on chosen fonts.
AA2 - more standard Arial fonts.
Comment 6 Petr Kraus 2013-05-19 19:55:50 UTC
I did some coparison on LibreOffice 4. I had this issue as long as I can remeber, but I will try on 3 version if requested.
On closer look I noticed there is some attempt at AA(it is not just black and white pixel values), but result for AA switched on and off is exactly the same and exported PDF gives much superior visual quality(I use Foxit to display).
Comment 7 Petr Kraus 2013-05-19 20:14:04 UTC
When I think about it, it is actually not AA problem but the same as bug 36426.
Comment 8 Thomas Hackert 2013-06-30 16:52:35 UTC
Hello Stefan, *,
does your comment 7 mean, that this one can be closed as a duplicate?
If so, I will close it (or better: If you could close it as a duplicate".
Sorry for the inconvenience
Thomas.
Comment 9 Petr Kraus 2013-07-06 00:22:26 UTC
Hello Thomas,
sorry for that confusion, it is probably not duplicate. It does fit the description of the OP in that bug, but it's too vague to be sure and screenshots there(by another poster) are completely different from my issue.

to Stefan: It would be nice if you could confirm, that you have the same issue as I based on the attachement from me, if you are still with us. Otherwise I should probably make a new bug report for it.

!
Also I found out that switching ClearType off fixes my problem with font rendering quality(of user content, but UI fonts gets ugly). (So it is only Windows related).

And there remains the bug or intent that unchecking the "Use Anti-Aliasing" option does not turn off font antialiasing.
Comment 10 Stefan Schweizer 2013-07-06 10:25:05 UTC
There are several problems with font rendering with LO even with the latest version 4.0.4.2 (tested on WIN 7 Pro 64bit):
- antialiasing is worse than with MS Powerpoint (feature optimization required)
- turning on/off antialiasing in LO makes no difference (bug)
- with LO impress there is a visible antialising/optimization process on changing slides which looks bad (bug/optimization required)
- font spacing is not even which looks also bad (seems to be the problem described in bug 36426)

I've attached a demo presentation where you can see the font rendering problems on turning slides. I
Comment 11 Stefan Schweizer 2013-07-06 10:26:25 UTC
Created attachment 82119 [details]
LO presentation which shows font rendering probems
Comment 12 Stefan Schweizer 2013-07-06 10:33:27 UTC
The font rendering problem occurs mainly with LO impress (on turning slides).
With LO Writer no font spacing problem occurs but the bug with turning on/off antialising is the same: it has no effect on the fonts except on lines (underscore).
Comment 13 Stefan Schweizer 2013-07-06 10:50:59 UTC
Created attachment 82120 [details]
Uneven character spacing

Spaces between each character varies.
Comment 14 Stefan Schweizer 2013-07-06 10:55:01 UTC
Created attachment 82121 [details]
Even Character spacing with MS Powerpoint

For comparision: Even Character spacing with MS Powerpoint 2010. No character touches another as with LO impress.
Comment 15 Stefan Schweizer 2013-07-06 12:57:33 UTC
The font rendering problem only occurs on Windows. On e.g. Ubuntu everything is fine!
Comment 16 QA Administrators 2015-04-01 14:42:53 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 17 Petr Kraus 2015-04-01 15:53:02 UTC
Yup, still the same, the same... my previous visual comparison in attachement is still relevant. But now text won't show in fullscreen with hardware acceleration enabled at all. Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1, LibreOffice 4.4.1.2 cs_CZ
Comment 18 shiphen 2016-01-01 14:55:46 UTC
Created attachment 121672 [details]
Jaggies
Comment 19 shiphen 2016-01-01 14:56:19 UTC
Hi 

I am new here. I am failing to get my text to anti-alias.

I have recently downloaded LibreOffice 4.4.7.2
Build ID: f3153a8b245191196a4b6b9abd1d0da16eead600
Locale: en_GB

Here is my hardware:
   Motherboard:         Intel DP55WB   (MA TX)
   Processor:           Intel Core I5 750 2.66GHz
   RAM:                 8GB  = (2GB 1066 DDR3 Memory) x4 modules
   Hard disk:           SSD 300GB, "INTEL SSDSA2CW300G3 ATA Device"
   Graphics card:       ATI Radeon HD 5770 - S/n: 7 78656 05291 8
   Operating system:    Windows7 Pro 64Bit


My Windows “Clear Type” is on.

And in LibreOffice Writer
Tools > Options > View > Graphics Output > “Use anti-aliasing” is ticked.

Without anti-aliasing text starts to become hard to read and looks basically hideous. There is absolutely no way I am going to tolerate that in a word processor. Even my web browsers – ALL my browers – are doing better that that!
Comment 20 m_a_riosv 2016-01-02 16:12:14 UTC
Created attachment 121681 [details]
Screenshot Win10x64 LibreOffice 5.0.4.2

Reproducible:
Win10x64
Version: 5.0.4.2 (x64)Build ID: 2b9802c1994aa0b7dc6079e128979269cf95bc78-GL

Version: 5.1.0.1 (x64) Build ID: bcace328aabc4c8c10b56daa87da0a2ee6579b5a
Threads 4; Ver: Windows 6.19; Render: GL; 

Version: 5.2.0.0.alpha0+ Build ID: b4082bed2de12cd576a06a9f456a71101809f3ed
CPU Threads: 4; OS Version: Windows 6.2; UI Render: GL; 
TinderBox: Win-x86@62-merge-TDF, Branch:MASTER, Time: 2016-01-02_00:47:38
Comment 21 Zop 2016-01-08 17:00:36 UTC
Created attachment 121802 [details]
three screenshots

I found some oddities which may help debugging. I just installed 5.0.4.2 and found that the anti-aliasing option doesn't enable anti-aliasing, like everyone else here (my system: Win7, 4690k cpu, nvidia 750 ti). I eventually found a Windows option called ClearType which seemed to enable anti-aliasing within LO Writer, as well as elsewhere in Windows. The interesting bit is after turning it back off, some things stayed anti-aliased in Writer.

In this reverted state ("reverted cleartype.png") The font preview dropdown had most fonts anti-aliased, but only some that were anti-aliased here were aliased in the document.
Comment 22 Buovjaga 2016-02-09 11:15:54 UTC
*** Bug 97426 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 23 Sayan 2016-02-12 09:02:40 UTC
Libreoffice: 5.1.0.3
Windows:     7x64

The font anti-aliasing issue is resolved if I turn off clear-type. But then everything else in the windows ui looks awful.
Comment 24 Jon Grossart 2016-02-15 19:03:05 UTC
Sabyan, you shouldn't change the version field to a newer release -- it's for the earliest version affected.

You can add comments about it still being present though.
Comment 25 Sayan 2016-02-16 11:27:03 UTC
Sorry, I somehow overlooked it.
Comment 26 Alexander Obersht 2016-02-26 16:12:13 UTC
5.1.0 is simply not usable (Windows 7 64-bit with ClearType enabled):
http://i.imgur.com/7Dmui9B.png

5.0.4 (for comparison):
http://i.imgur.com/tdJTw9b.png
Comment 27 Buovjaga 2016-03-03 14:55:38 UTC
*** Bug 97812 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 28 Adolfo Jayme Barrientos 2016-07-13 19:08:27 UTC
This shouldn’t be a problem with DirectWrite (the original issue was filed as a complaint against ClearType). Please don’t reopen.
Comment 29 Petr Kraus 2016-07-14 14:27:39 UTC
The rendering is still substandard for me though.
And the "anti-aliasing" switch still has no effect.
Comment 30 Adolfo Jayme Barrientos 2016-07-15 04:55:46 UTC
You must enable OpenGL rendering and use a version of Windows supporting DirectWrite; otherwise LibreOffice will fall back to ClearType.
Comment 31 Petr Kraus 2016-07-15 12:11:08 UTC
Oh, that works.

Still, how's that "WORKSFORME"? That's WONTFIX.

At the very least, the options are very confusing. And ClearType technology works just fine in any other application (and without any reliance on OGL).
Comment 32 g4827387 2016-08-17 01:21:26 UTC
I am on Windows 10 x86_64 and I just updated from LibreOffice 4.4.4 to 5.2.0.4, and the font rendering of the menus started looking quite bad (but still readable).  Since no one has presented the solution in a clear and concise manner, I'll try.

SOLUTION: In the Tools menu, select Options.  Expand the LibreOffice category and select View.  UNCHECK "Use OpenGL for all rendering" and "Force OpenGL even if blacklisted".  Then CHECK "Use hardware acceleration" and "Use anti-aliasing.".
Comment 33 rclark 2016-10-05 10:47:37 UTC
(In reply to g4827387 from comment #32)
> SOLUTION: In the Tools menu, select Options.  Expand the LibreOffice
> category and select View.  UNCHECK "Use OpenGL for all rendering" and "Force
> OpenGL even if blacklisted".  Then CHECK "Use hardware acceleration" and
> "Use anti-aliasing.".

This still doesn't work for me on Windows 7 64 bit. With the above settings, I only get anti aliased fonts in Writer if I have Cleartype *disabled* in Windows Control Panel (in which case all fonts in every other part of Windows look terrible)!
Comment 34 rclark 2016-10-05 10:53:11 UTC
(In reply to rclark from comment #33)
> This still doesn't work for me on Windows 7 64 bit. With the above settings,
> I only get anti aliased fonts in Writer if I have Cleartype *disabled* in
> Windows Control Panel (in which case all fonts in every other part of
> Windows look terrible)!

I should add that I'm using version 5.1.5.2 and it happens with several different fonts.
Comment 35 Juanjo 2016-10-15 23:09:55 UTC
Created attachment 128027 [details]
Antialiasing is incomplete

This should provide additional information about the antialias problem in Windows. The above line is from LibreOffice. The dark line below is from Powerpoint. Same font (Oswald). LO shows antialiasing, but little and it makes the height of characters seem wrong.
Comment 36 Juanjo 2016-10-15 23:11:49 UTC
I have found that antialiasing of LO is not working fine on Windows 10 with Clear Type. I use 5.2.2 (latest release), unchecked Open GL (It doesn't work with Surface) and checked antialiasing and hardware acceleration. As the attachment above shows, LO attempts some antialiasing but this is not properly computed and the height of fonts is mismatched. Powerpoint in the same machine with the same level of antialiasing in Cleartype produces more consistent borders and the font looks ok.
Comment 37 Buovjaga 2016-10-20 19:08:15 UTC
Can everybody please install the latest master: http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Win-x86@62-merge-TDF/current/

Then in the Windows command line:
SET SAL_USE_COMMON_LAYOUT=1

and in the same command line run the latest master build you installed (type/copy the whole path to the soffice.exe)

Set to NEEDINFO.
Change to RESOLVED WORKSFORME, if the problem went away.
Comment 38 QA Administrators 2017-12-04 12:45:45 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 39 QA Administrators 2018-01-02 10:18:30 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 40 Erkhyan 2018-10-06 19:49:28 UTC
(In reply to Buovjaga from comment #37)
> Can everybody please install the latest master:
> http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Win-x86@62-merge-TDF/current/
> 
> Then in the Windows command line:
> SET SAL_USE_COMMON_LAYOUT=1
> 
> and in the same command line run the latest master build you installed
> (type/copy the whole path to the soffice.exe)
> 
> Set to NEEDINFO.
> Change to RESOLVED WORKSFORME, if the problem went away.

Windows 7 64-bit, LibreOffice 6.1.2

This command did not work.

Font antialiasing is still entirely nonfunctional regardless of which boxes are checked or unchecked in the display options.

At this point, the only way I can get functional antialiasing in LibreOffice is by disabling OpenGL and launching the program through MacType.
Comment 41 nisha 2018-10-30 06:21:41 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 42 Edoardo Maria Elidoro 2018-10-30 10:04:30 UTC
Created attachment 146163 [details]
Comparison between menu rendering on Audacity, Firefox and Libreoffice (Windows 10)

Can confirm that text rendering on Windows 10 is pretty bad.

Here's an attachment comparing menu font rendering on Audacity, Firefox and LibreOffice.

I'm on Versione: 6.1.2.1 (x64)
Build ID: 65905a128db06ba48db947242809d14d3f9a93fe
Thread CPU: 8; SO: Windows 10.0; Resa interfaccia: GL; 
Versione locale: it-IT (it_IT); Calc: CL
Comment 43 typingcat 2018-12-12 10:05:03 UTC
Font antialiasing still does not work with 6.1.3.2 on Windows. It does not seem to be graphics hardware problem because it happens on Intel GPU and Radeon GPU. It does not happen on the same hardware and settings, if the OS is Linux.

It does not happen if "Use OpenGL for all rendering" is disabled. But if that is disabled, scrolling flickers (especially some dialogue boxes) badly.
Comment 44 NovarthaWoW 2019-05-03 05:38:06 UTC
Created attachment 151145 [details]
Test of AA using japanese kana with different scaling levels

I have the same or at least a similar issue.

I've attached example screenshots of a file I created yesterday to test a font.
Explanation: 
- The pictures in the "600pc"-folder were taken with a 600% zoom in LO.
- The pictures in the main folder were taken at 100%.
- The name indicates, which features were turned _ON_. (Hardware acceleration on/off, AA on/off, OpenGL on/off)

I found that the font rendering really depends on the size of the font and the scaling of the page.
With only 100% zoom the best results always had OpenGL disabled. As soon as OpenGL was enabled the smaller font sizes were completely horrible. 
So at 100% zoom from the ranking is like this:
Best--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->Worst
AA enabled+OpenGL disabled            AA+OpenGL enabled                                 AA disabled+OpenGL enabled

But at 600% it looks completely different. When OpenGL is enabled it looks much better than with disabled OpenGL.

Without any knowledge on how the rendering is actually done it seems as if the internal resolution with OpenGL is lower than without. Is subpixel rendering disabled in this case and/or hinting? 

Additional information:
I have LO 6.2.3.2 installed.
The font I wanted to test (and that was used for the screenshots) was BabelStone Han v12.1.4( http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Han.html Download: http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Download/BabelStoneHan.zip ).
I'm running Windows 10 x64 17763.404 and have a Radeon RX580 8GB. The installed graphics driver is the latest 19.4.3 release.


Final words: LO's rendering in Windows is not on par with other software like MS Office, Mozilla Firefox etc. It seems those issue(s) with the rendering on Windows have a long history. This really prevents adoption of a software. When somebody wants to give LO and FOSS a try and opens any file on Windows they will immediately be scared away by the bad font rendering. An office suite is about that: Text. Writing, formating and displaying it. Imho I think fixing the Windows rendering should be the top priority. Who cares about 10% shorter loading times of docx files, if the rendering is always bad?!

Also: The latest comment has been made months ago again and no updates since then. Is nobody interested in this? (I'm not a programmer so I can't do it myself.)
Comment 45 Buovjaga 2019-05-03 07:16:29 UTC
(In reply to NovarthaWoW from comment #44)
> Also: The latest comment has been made months ago again and no updates since
> then. Is nobody interested in this? (I'm not a programmer so I can't do it
> myself.)

Improving this sort of stuff requires expertise that not every programmer has. Of course it would get fixed, if some entity with money would contract a company to do the work. I don't know, if we have any purely volunteer programmer, who would be able to do something about this.

As a non-programmer, there are lots of things you can do to make the lives of programmers easier. If you can dedicate time for LibreOffice in general, you can start here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/GetInvolved#Quick_start_guide_for_beginners
Please get in touch with us: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/IRC

You could also ask "am I able to recruit some programmer who can work on this?"
Comment 46 Petr Kraus 2019-05-05 17:27:14 UTC
Seems fine to me now, except when OpenGL is enabled.
Maybe it is only a matter of forbidding OpenGL support on Windows (at least till we recruit that superprogrammer).
Comment 47 Petr Kraus 2019-05-05 17:29:02 UTC
PS: It is not obvious what the options even do. Certainly not for average user. There's some room for improvement there too.
Comment 48 Petr Kraus 2019-05-05 18:42:15 UTC
OK, I retested a bit (with Impress 6.2.3.2).

The Windows High DPI (150 %) setting seems OK enough. I think it is bit blurry though...

With no option the text gets AA with subpixel technique.

The HW accelleration option does nothing wrt output.

The antialiasing option does nothing with text (text is AA even if off). It changes some graphic elements though.

Enabling the OpenGL option breaks things. It tries to (single color; non-subpixel) antialias it, but it seems it does it wrong. It looks like it does not use the vector fonts correctly. Or the AA does not work in y direction or something.

If I export it as PDF, my reader also whole-pixel antialias, but it still looks right.
Comment 49 Jun Nogata 2020-05-24 08:19:20 UTC
Created attachment 161217 [details]
Screenshots comparing 6.4.4 and 7.0 displaying Japanese documents

This bug seems to be fixed in 7.0.
Japanese documents are displayed in 6.4.4 and 7.0. Hiragana is thinner in 6.4.4, but 7.0 is clearer.