mactype app does not affect Brackets 1.1 and 1.2

[f3yisayo]

Ever since version 1.1 >, font smoothing has been terrible for me on Windows, I've had to stick with version 1.0 for so long now, only for me to see an updated version 1.2 thinking it might fix the issue, but it didn't.

Version 1.0:

Version 1.1 and 1.2:

I have mactype installed which is supposed to render fonts beautifully everywhere so I'm not sure what's going on.

[PlanetVaster]

Personally in the images you attached I think 1.1 and 1.2 look better

[le717]

@f3yisayo There was some font-degrading when we picked up a new version of CEF, and while some of it has been fixed, there is clearly much to be done to restore full quality (in fact, there's been a history of font quality worsening over time, primarily related to CEF updates). There is some work going on at #8985 to update the fonts, which, if the current PR state is kept, will improve the quality. If you'd like, please pull those changes and let us know if it makes anything better or worse.

[f3yisayo]

@le717 thanks.

1. How do I replace the fonts ?
2. How do I pull the changes ?
3. Do I have to build Brackets from source to achieve the desired changes?

[nethip]

@le717 Please refer to the following document to build Brackets from source.
https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/How-to-Hack-on-Brackets

Once you have built this, do this.

1. Open GitBash
2. cd to where you have downloaded Brackets source
3. Run the following commands

git checkout -b le717-new-source-sans-pro master
git pull https://github.com/le717/brackets.git new-source-sans-pro

You should now be having the change which @le717 had put up for review(#8985)

[peterflynn]

Changing title -- @f3yisayo, it seems the problem here mainly lies with the "mactype" font customizer tool you're using. Brackets 1.1 and onward render fonts the way recent versions of Chrome (and other modern Windows apps) render fonts: using DirectWrite. The mactype FAQ says:

unfortunately, DirectWrite interference is currently not implemented. MacType currently renders directwrite by changing DirectWrite parameters which is far from real rendering. You may turn this off by setting "DirectWrite" (case insensative) to 0 under general section.

The screenshot of 1.0 above looks nothing like the text in 1.0 running on a regular Windows system -- the strokes are much heavier, and LCD AA is greatly reduced, compared to the normal 1.0 appearance. So I assume what you were seeing in 1.0 was due to the effects of mactype. Your 1.1/1.2 screenshot shows Brackets rendering normally, so it's clear mactype is no longer having an effect on the newer builds. That's not something we're in a position to fix.

For that reason, I'd be inclined to either mark this as 'no priority' or close it as not our bug.

[peterflynn]

I did notice that, in the Extension Manager dialog specifically, our newer builds have lost subpixel antialiasing -- a sliver of #9978 that isn't fixed yet. We could keep this bug open to track that issue, but I have a feeling @f3yisayo is concerned with the overall UI appearance and not solely Extension Manager... so they're really two different issues.

[peterflynn]

Fwiw, the missing subpixel AA in the Extension Manager dialog is due to something in the project tree's CSS -- remove that bit of UI from the DOM, and the problem goes away. That's almost certainly Chrome bug https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=435317 again, but unfortunately someone's marked it as a security bug recently, so now we have no way to tell when it will be fixed... yay? :-/

[ralder]

for continue using mactype #10398 (comment)