661917 - Force GDI mode for classic web fonts should depend on text-rendering property

Status: NEW

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Doug Wright]

Bug 661471 changed font rendering behaviour to use GDI rendering instead of DirectWrite for the "classic web fonts".

IMHO, this should be hooked up to the text-rendering css property - so that setting text-rendering: geometricPrecision would result in always using DirectWrite.

optimizeLegibility or auto would continue to use the GDI override for the classic fonts.

Comment 1

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

I'm not sure this is the right thing to do; ISTM that the choice of font rendering mode should be in the hands of the user who is the one reading the page.

Comment 2

[Doug Wright]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I'm not sure this is the right thing to do; ISTM that the choice of font
> rendering mode should be in the hands of the user who is the one reading the
> page.

Does the pref to disable DW entirely still work? Or a user stylesheet/extension could override. Or maybe the prefs could be split into "prefer" and "force"?

It just seems to me that there might be situations where DW rendering really would be the better choice (there must have been some reason for including optimizeLegibility vs geometricPrecision into CSS text-rendering in the first place).

I don't see this as any different from the rest of the CSS cascade - individual users should always get the final say, but if they're silent then the author's styling choices should win over any UA defaults.

Comment 3

[[Baboo]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> IMHO, this should be hooked up to the text-rendering css property - so that
> setting text-rendering: geometricPrecision would result in always using
> DirectWrite.
> 

Doesn't DW still do hinting? Because according to the originating SVG specification geometricPrecision "will usually cause the user agent to suspend the use of hinting".