Hi all,

I've noticed that when using layer backing on a NSTextField the font becomes fuzzy - it seems that it switches from subpixel anti-aliasing to normal. And indeed this seems to be the case. After reading CATextLayer's documentation (assuming that NSTextField uses it to draw its text), it becomes apparent that subpixel anti-aliasing cannot be used with CATextLayer. Here's the exact wording: "Note: CATextLayer disabled sub-pixel antialiasing when rendering text. Text can only be drawn using sub-pixel antialiasing when it is composited into an existing opaque background at the same time that it's rasterized. There is no way to draw subpixel-anialiased text by itself, whether into an image or a layer, separately in advance of having the background pixels to weave the text pixels into. Setting the opacityproperty of the layer to YES does not change the rendering mode."

After reading the above note it looks to me that if the CATextLayer has an opaque background, it should be able to use sub-pixel anti- aliasing *if* we provide the background pixels in advance. The question is, is it possible to do this? I tried setting the backgroundColor property of a NSTextField's layer and it still produced normal anti-aliased text as opposed to subpixel anti-aliased. Has anyone else bumped into this issue?

I've also taken a sample screencast of the degradation of the quality of the text when using layer backing on a NSTextField - http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~md207/ca_bugs/text_render/CA_text_render.mov .

Kind regards,
Milen
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