172430 - Anti-Aliasing of fonts does not work

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Layout, defect)

Description

[Frank Klemm]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020529
Build Identifier: System which is used for reporting bug: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020529

Antialiasing of fonts do not work.
This affects at least:

  - Windows NT 4.0 SP5 on a Matrox Millennium II
  - Windows 2000 SP3 on a ATI Radeon 8500 
  - Linux 2.2.19 using XFree 4.1 on a GForce 2 MX
  - Linux 2.2.18 using XFree 4.0 on a Matrox Millennium II

Especially the W2K machine has as counterpart a working IE 5.0
with well working antialaising for fonts.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. 
2.
3.




I know that antialiased font under X11 is a very difficult thing so
the main pointer goes to the W2K system

Comment 1

[Aaron Leventhal]

Layout?

Comment 2

[Sebastian Biallas]

AA fonts with X11 is bug 126919.

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This is at least two separate bugs (one windows one linux).  At least one of
those (linux) is invalid/duplicate.  AA on Linux is available in special builds
but not in general ones.  It's being worked on.

Comment 4

[Michael Lefevre]

so let's say this bug is about Windows rather than Linux (which does now have
the xft stuff available).  anti-aliasing WFM 2002113012/win2000/1.2.1.

reporter: are you sure you have Windows' anti-aliasing turned on? does
anti-aliasing work for you in other apps? can you reproduce the lack of
anti-aliasing in a recent build of mozilla? thanks.

Comment 5

[Michael Lefevre]

No response from reporter for >30 days. resolving WORKSFORME.

Reporter: If you can reproduce this with a recent build of Mozilla, then please
reopen this bug and give details. Thanks.

Comment 6

[Prognathous]

Re-opening.

Since I'm usnig ClearType, I haven't notiCed this bug so far. However, those who
use Windows default AA (Standard) sure do. Fonts are simply not dithered in this
mode.

Tested under WinXP SP2, with the latest Firefox trnunk, as well as with Mozilla
1.7.5.

To reproduce, set Standard AA under Control Panel -> Display -> Appearance ->
Effects -> Use the following method: Standard

Prog.

Comment 7

[Prognathous]

Attachment: Zoomed in comparison of Anti-Aliasing in Mozilla/WinXP

Comment 8

[Eyal Rozenberg]

But, at least for Windows, this is simply the default behavior. I'm seeing the
exact same thing with Internet Explorer and MS-Word. Perhaps with the systems
mentioned earlier this is an issue but with WinXP the fact that there's almost
no AA is the expected behavior.

Comment 9

[Prognathous]

(In reply to comment #8)
> But, at least for Windows, this is simply the default behavior.

It is *not* the default behavior, at least not in IE6. Testcase coming.

Prog.

Comment 10

[Prognathous]

Attachment: Testcase

Comment 11

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Attachment: MSIE 6 vs Mozilla w/ the testcase - same behavior

Although the anti-aliasing of the big text is a bit different, the behavior is
the same: normal-sized text unaliased, big-sized text aliased.

Comment 12

[Prognathous]

Attachment: MSIE 6 vs Mozilla with the last testcase (using *Standard Anti-Aliasing*)

Here's that test again. In IE font both sizes are dithered, in Mozilla only the
large one is, hence why the smaller one looks like crap.

Anyone else want to provide a screenshot of the two?

Prog.

Comment 13

[Prognathous]

Hold on, I just found out that IE was configured to use larger-than-normal
fonts. In normal size (without ClearType), it indeed does not dither the fonts,
which is an unfortunate decision by MS. Is there anyway Gecko can over-ride this
ugly default?

Prog.

Comment 14

[Eyal Rozenberg]

You mean, a fortunate decision by MS (who should perhaps have included more
fine-grained aliasing controls for people who don't like their decisions). I
don't want to see small fonts smudged on my screen.

Anyway, you can't change settings in IE and make the comparison. You know very
well that if you press Ctrl +  in Mozilla, both lines in your testcase get aliased.

Comment 15

[Prognathous]

Are you actually hinting that I upped the font size on purpose just to come back
a minute later and comment that "I just found out that IE was configured to use
larger-than-normal fonts"?

As for MS decisions, you're entitled to your opinion. Heck, I hear jaggy
monospace fonts look real good in monochrome terminals, if you catch my drift ;-)

Prog. 

Comment 16

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Renaming bug according to the recent comments. Asking for Mozilla to override
the default Windows behavior does not mean that anti-aliasing doesn't 'work' and
certainly has nothing to do with the list of OSes and gfx cards the bug poster
mentions.

And I suggest resolving as WONTFIX.

Comment 17

[Prognathous]

Fine tuning the summary. What this bug asks for is to expand our current use
anti-aliasing in normal-sized fonts, so that it's on not only for ClearType, but
also for Standard anti-aliasing.

Prog.

Comment 18

[Michael Lefevre]

woah there... this bug was about anti-aliasing not working. If you need a bug
nearly 2 years later with a different summary, different OS, and different
description, then it should be obvious that a new bug is needed.

re-resolving