DirectWrite for NT 5.x and 6.x

[win32ss]

The number of GDI-related issues had recently grown to the point that it became difficult to support GDI. Frustrating the situation was that reproducibility of some of these issues was very poor. And Microsoft recently contributed support for the ClearType text tuner to Chromium.

So, I decided to standardize font rendering by allowing all Supermium-compatible platforms to run DirectWrite as well, fixing all GDI-related issues and also in future allowing for colour fonts:

A few minor issues are still present, but I intend on offering DirectWrite when all are fixed.

One problem is distribution. DirectWrite binaries cannot be distributed directly, but I think we can download a random Windows Update with the appropriate binary, extract it and then copy and patch it as needed.

[JoachimHenze]

I do wonder, whether that will help me with the poor font rendering on XPSP3 on sourceforge, that happens on GDI when running the browser without cmdline-flag --disable-remote-fonts.

How can we test that DirectWrite-experiment? Which flags to set, and which files to copy in?

[win32ss]

I'm still working on it. The kernel32 wrapper (different from progwrp in terms of linkage and patching) used for DirectWrite ran into some compiler bug that was just fixed (a locale table was being accessed as an offset of the default x64 image base, which would never work because the binary does not have a fixed base address).

And then there was a problem getting service control manager handles from within the sandbox which was fixed. This leaves us with one bug, which prevents the display of the monotype fonts in the developer tools console. That's because the IDWriteFactory->CreateGlyphRunAnalysis method throws an exception if the provided matrix has an horizontal scaling value of 0. It will render if set to 1. However, developer tools console fonts fall back to GDI if --single-process is invoked.

Since it may take some time to determine why the matrix is initialized to 0, I am thinking about simply patching the binary further to force the horizontal scaling value to 1 if 0.

[win32ss]

Another important update. I had problems finding a way to redistribute DWrite.dll, especially after discovering that the expand utility and its dependency dpx.dll on Windows XP does not properly support the Windows Update modules used in Vista and above, but then I found out that a redistributable version of DirectWrite exists as part of the Windows App SDK and includes the latest DirectWrite interfaces and features. The DLL is named DWriteCore.dll and it exports the same functions as DWrite.dll, but with "DirectWriteCore" in place of "DirectWrite" in the export names. When this is all changed, it can be used on Windows 7 without any further modifications. Here is Segoe UI Emoji being used in colour on Windows 7:

Now I will backport this to Windows XP as well. I also think that this will work well for Superfox.

[win32ss]

And now on XP (I used Segoe UI Emoji - I will now revise my Noto Emoji-masquerading-as-Segoe UI Emoji to support colour):

32 bit Supermium users can try this (dependency on VC++ 2015-19 runtime). Place in the same folder as chrome.exe:
dwritecore_xp_32.zip

[Vangelis66]

Sorry for being thick 😉 , but

a) what about Windows Vista SP2 32-bit (with all MS updates until its EoL)?
b) is your fix intended only to address monochrome emojis under Win <=7 SP1 ? - I currently use an extension to mitigate this, without installing the NotoEmoji.ttf file system-wide...
c) is your fix going to address the issue of not decoding downloaded web fonts under Vista SP2 with DW (unless one disables sandbox or switches to GDI font rendering) ?

Thanks in advance for any insight, congrats for your coding efforts overall ❤️ ...

[win32ss]

Sorry for being thick 😉 , but

a) what about Windows Vista SP2 32-bit (with all MS updates until its EoL)? b) is your fix intended only to address monochrome emojis under Win <=7 SP1 ? - I currently use an extension to mitigate this, without installing the NotoEmoji.ttf file system-wide... c) is your fix going to address the issue of not decoding downloaded web fonts under Vista SP2 with DW (unless one disables sandbox or switches to GDI font rendering) ?

Thanks in advance for any insight, congrats for your coding efforts overall ❤️ ...

Yes, all issues with GDI or earlier DirectWrite iterations would be resolved, as this would add all support for newer DirectWrite interfaces, allowing for the use of remote fonts and colour fonts. This also fixes all GDI offset issues and GDI-specific bugs.

In future, this DLL will be provided with Supermium, and hacks to support earlier DirectWrite versions will be removed.

[Vangelis66]

Many thanks for your quick and reassuring response! 👍 ...

Until very recently, this specific discussion only had NT 5.x in its title, the context in your recent replies only mentions Windows 7 and XP, plus your test attachment has xp in its filename, so it wasn't clear to me whether Vista(32) would be supported/a test candidate at all 😜 ...

I downloaded and extracted the dwritecore_xp_32.zip attachment above, and placed all 5 DLLs adjacent to progwrp.dll-v1.1.0.5018; this is a Supermium 124 (final) x86 portable installation under Vista SP2 x86 (no WinXP machine accessible here); below a screengrab of the MSFN site without "the fix" (DW+sandbox enabled):

... and now with "the fix" put in place:

So, web font (Font Awesome in this case) decoding appears to work OK here (under DW+sandbox BOTH enabled) ! Huge thanks!

I am reluctant to install the .ttf file to my Vista system for now (the emoji extension I referenced continues to work as intended), so that part of the test will be left to someone else 😄 ...

Take good care ...

[win32ss]

Here is the DirectWrite runtime for 32 bit platforms:
dwritecore_xp_32.zip

Here is the DirectWrite runtime for 64 bit platforms:
dwritecore_xp_64.zip

Here is the d3dcompiler_47.dll (3D acceleration) for 32 bit platforms (you may have to add --ignore-gpu-blocklist to make use of it):
d3dcompiler_47_xp_32.zip

Here is the d3dcompiler_47.dll (3D acceleration) for 64 bit platforms (you may have to add --ignore-gpu-blocklist to make use of it):
d3dcompiler_47_xp_64.zip

Place the DirectWrite runtimes in the same folder as your chrome.exe, while the d3dcompiler_47 runtimes can be placed in the same directory (pwrp_k32.dll is in both archives in case the user picks only one of the two packages).

The d3dcompiler_47 runtimes are only needed on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

The DirectWrite runtimes have been tested against English and Russian Windows. Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-19 runtime is presently required to use the DirectWrite runtimes. The DirectWrite runtimes will, of course, also be useful to users of Windows Vista, 7 and 8.x. They will be bundled with the next major Supermium releases with the VC++ dependency removed. A new colour emoji font will also be bundled in place of the existing font that was greatly compromised for XP GDI compatibility.

[NoNameNeeded5]

ATI Radeon HD 5400
driver version 9.0.100.1000

[MWF2]

same issues, but here about graphics driver that i have
Intel HD Graphics 3000
Version: 6.14.10.5437

[RealDevonSoft]

Works flawlessly under Supermium, and even the Discord Electron client!

OS used: Windows 7 Ultimate

[NoNameNeeded5]

Works flawlessly under Supermium, and even the Discord Electron client!

OS used: Windows 7 Ultimate

Hardware acceleration works anyway on Windows 7, even without the additional files.

[suama194]

Google Street View is heavy in 3D mode, so
I try to see it in 2D mode.
https://www.google.com/maps/?force=canvas

[Vangelis66]

Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-19 runtime is presently required to use the DirectWrite runtimes.
...
The DirectWrite runtimes will, of course, also be useful to users of Windows Vista, 7 and 8.x.

On my fully updated Vista SP2 x86 OS, I probed the DW runtimes (package dwritecore_xp_32.zip) with DependencyWalker-x86; I discovered that the package's 5 DLLs have a hard dependency in turn on below 5 DLLs:

API-MS-WIN-CRT-RUNTIME-L1-1-0.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CRT-HEAP-L1-1-0.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CRT-STDIO-L1-1-0.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CRT-MATH-L1-1-0.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CRT-STRING-L1-1-0.DLL

(and all 5 of them depend on ucrtbase.dll, too) which, under Vista SP2 fully updated, constitute part of the Win10 UCRT (Windows 10 Universal C Runtime), delivered in Vista SP2 through to Win8.1 as a Windows Update - or manually downloaded via Microsoft Download Centre (for Vista SP2 x86, it was Windows6.0-KB2999226-x86.msu); so, I did NOT have to additionally install MSVC++2015-2022 on my Vista laptop...

However, MS did never issue Win10 UCRT for NT<6.0, so one has to specify that the dependency on MSVC++2015-2019 is limited to NT 5.x (with the EoS version there being v14.28.29213.0 😜 ) ...

Just as a FYI 😃 ; kindest regards.

[trlkly]

It took me a bit over an hour to find the required MSVC DLL files for Windows XP, so I thought I'd link where I found them:

https://github.com/abbodi1406/vcredist/releases/tag/v0.35.0

https://board.eclipse.cx/viewtopic.php?p=4502&sid=6ba138e588833271ef493133cc787254#p4502

It now works great--both DirectWrite and GPU acceleration. I'm now going to expereiment with turning of acceleration in my VM and see if it still works, so that GDI won't be needed at all.

[Vangelis66]

(with the EoS version there being v14.28.29213.0

Direct MS links, courtesy of
https://github.com/abbodi1406/vcredist/tree/master/source_links

14.28.29213.0 - last version compatible with Windows XP

https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/566435ac-4e1c-434b-b93f-aecc71e8cffc/B75590149FA14B37997C35724BC93776F67E08BFF9BD5A69FACBF41B3846D084/VC_redist.x64.exe
https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/566435ac-4e1c-434b-b93f-aecc71e8cffc/0D59EC7FDBF05DE813736BF875CEA5C894FFF4769F60E32E87BD48406BBF0A3A/VC_redist.x86.exe
https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/7b0dbd13-8740-4bcd-b86e-dffe0002c0b2/07C0219A8002491F85604EB76AADBD11DB819AF8A813621376B5DA5630C21E20/VC_redist.arm64.exe

File VC_redist.x86.exe of v14.28.29213.0 is the last one that is dual-signed (i.e. both SHA1 - XP compatible - and SHA2 file signatures) and that also contains dual-signed payload, i.e. DLLs; for this specific use case (DWrite.dll under XP SP3), what's really needed is the bundled, dual-signed, "Win10 uCRT" DLLs, to be found inside the vcRuntimeMinimum_x86 directory, once the EXE has been extracted with specialised tool; these DLLs are of version 10.0.10586.15, signed on 2020-08-13 ...

MS continued to bundle "Win10 uCRT" with VC_redist.x86.exe until v14.29.30024.0, but that one isn't XP-compatible (only SHA2 signed, same with the DLLs); in more recent versions of the redisrtibutable, "Win10 uCRT" is being bundled ONLY as .msu files targeting supported WinOS versions (NT >=6.0 but < 10.0), in case those OSes haven't been fully updated via MU...

[JoachimHenze]

I tested on XPSP3 x86:
https://github.com/win32ss/supermium/releases/tag/v124 "Supermium 124.0.6367.245 final"

installed "Microsoft Visual C++ 14.28.29213.0 - last version compatible with Windows XP" from @Vangelis66
https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/566435ac-4e1c-434b-b93f-aecc71e8cffc/0D59EC7FDBF05DE813736BF875CEA5C894FFF4769F60E32E87BD48406BBF0A3A/VC_redist.x86.exe

copied into the binary folder in extracted form:
d3dcompiler_47_xp_32.zip from Win32SS
dwritecore_xp_32.zip from Win32SS
progwrp_32__1.1.5018.zip from Win32SS

and started the browser with the following cmdline flags:
C:\Programme\Supermium124test\chrome.exe --disable-alternate-ds --safebrowsing-disable-download-protection --in-process-gpu --use-angle=d3d9 --ignore-gpu-blocklist --compact-ui --disable-features=DownloadBubble

As a result: I got for the first time 3D acceleration from @win32ss which I confirmed to be working by watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhG18g4XNO8
which played more or less fluidly and with almost stutterfree sound. I had a few very rare sound stuttering remaining, and sound stutters for a moment when switching the tab while the video was playing.
So the result of the 3d acceleration is a tiny bit worse for me still than when I do use the progwrp 1.2.0.5067 (where I can switch the tabs during the video without sound stutter, and do have never sound stutter within the video)
So the TLS is still a tiny bit better when using the ida-re-things-version, but you are definitely catching up.

But what I actually intended to test was the font rendering, and although I did not disable the webfonts in this test, the source-forge-test did still ugly-aliased fonts:

Until now I do see no benefit in doing the Direct-Write-Fonting. Did I do anything wrong?

For now I do still prefer to stick without the webfonts by passing cmdline param --disable-remote-fonts, and with GDI font rendering, accepting a few unrenderable glyphs then ofc. But I do have sharp font rendering in return.

[Alex313031]

@JoachimHenze where did you get progwrp 1.2.0.5067?

[Vangelis66]

... It's the alternate progwrp.dll implementation by IDA-RE-things:

https://github.com/IDA-RE-things/Chrome-xp-api-adapter/releases/tag/v1.2

[trlkly]

@JoachimHenze The fonts do not look like that when I go to SourceForge. Those look like how it rendered when it was using GDI fonts.

Are you sure you didn't force on GDI fonts in chrome://flags ?

Also, do you have ClearType turned on on your system? If not, try turning that on, and then restarting Supermium. Also, what happens if you add --disable-lcd-text to your chrome options?

[win32ss]

I believe he disables all font smoothing in Windows. And this results in a very rough appearance of remote fonts in Supermium. Based on another issue, I decided that Supermium's own anti-aliasing would be used in such cases in future releases, with another switch implemented to disable it.

[trlkly]

@win32ss That's what I was hoping that using the --disable-lcd-text option would do, forcing on the built-in antialiasing.

Also, on another forum, I saw someone talk about enabling the Fontations option in chrome://flags to fix their font problem. Though this was in a different fork.

[IDA-RE-things]

I have created bugreport for current DWrite.dll, distributed with v124-r2 release, running on XP.
#820