Hi Mark, maybe you should start a new thread with your proposed API and a quick summary of the problems that it solves.
OpenJFX is a community effort after all, so let’s see whether we can get your proposal accepted. Mark Raynsford <org.open...@io7m.com> schrieb am Fr. 15. Dez. 2023 um 23:21: > On Fri, 2023-12-15 at 13:40 -0800, Philip Race wrote: > > I already gave a brief explanation of why FX text rendering is what > > it is. > > I will expand on it a bit but a number of the salient points have > > already been made by others. > > It is unlikely we will make anything other than carefully considered > > tweaks, so this is by way of explanation. > > I'm actually not even asking to change the defaults. The dictated-from- > above defaults are the problem. I am inevitably going to fork JavaFX > and maintain a patched version even if the changes won't be accepted > upstream. These are the changes I intend to make: > > 1. Add an -fx-font-bitmaps CSS attribute that, by default, will be > set to false. Setting this value to true will cause bitmap > information to be loaded if present, and ignored otherwise. > > 2. Add an -fx-font-hinting CSS attribute that, by default, will be > set to false. Setting this value to true will enable hinting > using whatever is the default (in other words, not setting > FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING). > > 3. Add an extra value to -fx-font-smoothing: none. Setting this > will use FT_LOAD_TARGET_MONO and disable effectively disable > antialiasing. This is important for my users for small-text > console components. > > I'm just tired of my applications looking like optical migraines when > everyone else on the planet (including the UI library in the JDK > itself) manages to look better, regardless of the apparent technical > consequences for frankly niche cases. > > > Some people absolutely insist that being true to the design is what > > is most important > > A high contrast is the most important to someone else. > > No jaggies is important to another person. > > Hinting is essential to some people in some cases. To other people it > > is anathema. etc, etc. > > And by disallowing developers to change the behaviour in any way, > you're deciding this for them. You're effectively pleasing the smallest > set of people possible. > > > And then on top of that hinting is not even designed to be used in > > such rotated cases. > > So we must all pay for ugly text because someone somewhere wants to > spin text around, and we don't get to opt-out. > > > And as the Amble case points out, you are dependent on the quality of > > the hinting which is very expensive. Poor hinting is worse than none. > > So JavaFX, which has no idea which fonts I'm bundling, is clearly more > qualified than I am to decide whether I want hinting or not. > > > And animations using text - not common in Swing, but central to FX - > > are very jerky if you use hinting. > > It's almost as if there's some kind of design flaw, and a ton of work > to maintain a feature that I've yet to see anyone actually say that > they care about. Take a look at any modern 3D rendering engine with UI > support, and you won't see these issues, and they not only perform > scaling and rotation but frequently perspective projection onto 3D > surfaces. > > > And "bitmaps" in a font are extremely rare. > > Maybe in the fonts you use. "Extremely rare" is entirely subjective; > there's an entire field of programmer fonts that use carefully tuned > bitmaps to stay sharp. Guess we're just not allowed to use those > either, because JavaFX says so. > > > LCD text also doesn't work well with rotations because the 3X > > resolution you get is only in one orientation. > > On that we agree. I have no interest in LCD text on any platform. > > Guess I'll get working on the fork. > > -- > Mark Raynsford | https://www.io7m.com > >
