Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

V01D · 2010-02-03 21:44:03

Hi,
I do most of my programming under netbeans, but I've always disliked the way it renders fonts, compared to other GTK/KDE applications I use. Even more, there seems to be a difference in font sizes.

I'm currently using openjdk6 (I think I've tested SUN's jre also) with netbeans 6.8 from official repos. I have set hinting to "slight" under KDE's settings.
Particularly, I'm using a font (Monaco) which is a TTF clone of a Mac/OS font. As you can see in the screenshot, to the right there is "konsole" (I'm using the jed editor there) and to the left is the same file but under netbeans. The font rendering in konsole is perfect, but in netbeans there are some glitches (the color bleed on the 'w', the smoother looking curves in konsole, etc.)

I'm using -Dswing.aatext=true -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on (I've also tried lcd and gasp for the latter).

I've read that SUN's java uses its own font rendering engine, but openjdk should be using xft, so I don't understand the difference.

Any idea on possible solutions?
Thanks

Mad Fish · 2010-02-23 22:18:28

Damn Swing and reinventing of the wheel (own font rendering engine). I've tried to find a solution to this, but haven't found anything.
If you're using it for C++ (it seems you are), maybe it is better to use Qt Creator or KDevelop? They are much faster also.

V01D · 2010-02-23 22:41:25

No, I use it for C++ and also Ruby (and a bit of fortran77 at work... yuck). I'm kinda stuck with netbeans just because of Ruby, but I'm not really sure if I'm really using any advanced feature that any other IDE may have. Do you know any other good one which handles Ruby/C++?

Mad Fish · 2010-02-23 23:27:38

http://www.radrails.org/
Maybe this one? It is based on Eclipse.

V01D · 2010-02-23 23:38:34

wouldn't that have the same problem? since it is based on eclipse, which is also a Java app?

Mad Fish · 2010-02-24 13:15:50

Eclipse uses a different GUI toolkit (SWT). It has no problems with font rendering.

V01D · 2010-02-24 13:22:24

Good to know... and have you tried radrails? Is it rails oriented? Or would It server any ruby developer (I don't do rails).

starhero · 2010-03-02 17:28:30

Have been having the same problem on Ubuntu. You need to use these options

-J-Dswing.aatext=true -J-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on

RadRails is also a good IDE for ruby although I switched to netbeans once ruby support was added

V01D · 2010-03-02 17:31:23

I'm already using those options (see my original post)

starhero · 2010-03-03 04:12:00

In your original post you don't have "-J" in front of the options. Without the "-J" I wasn't seeing any antialiasing and when I ran netbeans from the terminal it gave me "unknown option -Dswing.aatext=true". Added the "-J" and now I can read my code. I'm using Sun's jdk/jre and netbeans 6.8 on Ubuntu 9.04

Arch Linux

#1 2010-02-03 21:44:03

Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

#2 2010-02-23 22:18:28

Re: Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

#3 2010-02-23 22:41:25

Re: Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

#4 2010-02-23 23:27:38

Re: Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

#5 2010-02-23 23:38:34

Re: Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

#6 2010-02-24 13:15:50

Re: Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

#7 2010-02-24 13:22:24

Re: Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

#8 2010-03-02 17:28:30

Re: Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

#9 2010-03-02 17:31:23

Re: Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

#10 2010-03-03 04:12:00

Re: Ugly font rendering/hinting in netbeans

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