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Text Anti-Aliasing
https://xwidget.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4393		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  RiseUp [ April 17th, 2014, 6:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Text Anti-Aliasing
Is there some type of setting to adjust the amount or type of anti-aliasing used for text in XWidget? I am piecing together an XWidget skin from a Rainmeter one, and using the same exact font, font weight/style, color, size, etc., the two (Rainmeter and XWidget) display the fonts differently. They look much cleaner when Rainmeter displays the text, but the same text displayed in XWidget looks slightly more blurry.

Any ideas?
Author:  digigamer [ April 17th, 2014, 11:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Text Anti-Aliasing
There is an option to enable anti-aliasing in font settings.

Check Anti-alias under Font in object properties.

However, Rainmeter uses D2D to do rendering, whereas, XWidget still uses GDI+ (See post for an explanation). D2D has an added convenience of device-independent pixels, the and in RM, as I've noticed, the base resolution is somewhat 72 dpi, as opposed to XWidgets' 96 dpi. So, a 10px font will match to something about 12 px in XWidget. So the Anti-aliasing done here can never match that of RM.

This is just a reference, I haven't been to RM, for years and have to scuffle with the docs to give you a measure.
Good Luck, looking foreword to see your widgets! :)


Since, texts are vectors, It should not be much difference, let me dig out what XWidget does behind-the-scenes... and if someting is missing, I put a feature request
Author:  RiseUp [ April 18th, 2014, 8:44 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Text Anti-Aliasing
Thanks for the info, digigamer! The main reason I stay away from using RM is because of the lack of a GUI/WYSIWYG editor. I've used Samurize for years, but I am now trying out XWidget to see if I can switch over to something that is actively being developed.

I understand that there shouldn't be much of a difference, and maybe it's just my detail-oriented eyes, but the difference is quite obvious to me. I'll take a screenshot for comparison and post it here.
Author:  RiseUp [ April 18th, 2014, 9:13 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Text Anti-Aliasing
Screenshots for comparison (XWidget on left, Rainmeter on right):

In the following screenshot, the text is the same fontsize between XWidget and Rainmeter:
Image

In this next screenshot, I increased XWidget's fontsizes to approximate the same size appearance as Rainmeter's display:
Image

Especially in the month text, you can see how RM is displaying it more clearly than XW. Anti-aliasing IS checked on both, and unchecking it makes things worse.

Is there anything I can do about this, or is this something hard-coded into XWidget's software that I cannot change?
Author:  Jimking [ April 18th, 2014, 9:19 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Text Anti-Aliasing
I don't know about RM, but XWidget designer has a lot of options/effects/modes that can be used for txts. So you can't compare and be objective with just a clean txt and only with "Anti-aliasing" on.
Trust me! ;)
Author:  RiseUp [ April 18th, 2014, 9:30 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Text Anti-Aliasing
jimking wrote:
I don't know about RM, but XWidget designer has a lot of options/effects/modes that can be used for txts. So you can't compare and be objectivewith just a clean txt and only with "Anti-aliasing" on.
Trust me! ;)


Since I am new to XWidget, would you explain to me what I can try to "clean up" the appearance of the font? It appears to be a little on the fuzzy side, and I don't have blur on or anything like that. To my uneducated mind, it seems that a different type of anti-aliasing is needed, but I am certainly open to try any advice you might have! :)
Author:  Jimking [ April 18th, 2014, 9:46 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Text Anti-Aliasing
1) If you take a closer look on the XWDesigner you will see that you have a lot of default options and modes, and with various combinations will give you a LOT of possibilities. You need some practice and play with the values to see the real potencial.
2) After all the widgets that I made I can tell you for sure that the quality of the txt and the anti-aliasing depends a LOT on the quality of the font itself! Not all fonts are made "well" with high dpi, so on bigger sizes looks ugly. You can play a little with the shadow,angle and softness to make a font appear "cleaner". The anti-aliasing is on from default.
As I told you, it needs some practice and play with the values to see the real potencial and the results.

Image Image
Author:  RiseUp [ April 18th, 2014, 9:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Text Anti-Aliasing
Thank you very much for your help, jimking. I'll play around with the options and see what I can do.
Author:  digigamer [ April 20th, 2014, 7:46 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Text Anti-Aliasing
RiseUp wrote:
Is there anything I can do about this, or is this something hard-coded into XWidget's software that I cannot change?


As I highlighted, Rainmeter uses different units do do layout, you'll certainly need to do some conversion. As per my experience, it is something like 120% difference.

And about the Anti-aliasing, since RM uses D2D it provides better results (of course, you have dedicated hardware, i.e, the GPU to handle these) but XWidget depends on software-based GDI.
DirectDraw uses a different drawing engine (sometimes better) but the GDI really draws things crappy... (blame microshaft here :x )

You can certainly tweak many things like shadow, glow, text-frame and all, to make things more legible... But about the quality of Anti-aliasing, certainly there is not much you can do...

However, to improve font smoothing quality, make sure you have enabled ClearType and caliberated it properly. You can find it in personalisation (somewhere near the place you change your wallpaper)

You can also install GDI++, GDIPP, EZGDI or something similar to improve results and this works wonders!
Author:  RiseUp [ April 20th, 2014, 10:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Text Anti-Aliasing
digigamer wrote:
And about the Anti-aliasing, since RM uses D2D it provides better results (of course, you have dedicated hardware, i.e, the GPU to handle these) but XWidget depends on software-based GDI.
DirectDraw uses a different drawing engine (sometimes better) but the GDI really draws things crappy... (blame microshaft here :x )

You can certainly tweak many things like shadow, glow, text-frame and all, to make things more legible... But about the quality of Anti-aliasing, certainly there is not much you can do...

However, to improve font smoothing quality, make sure you have enabled ClearType and caliberated it properly. You can find it in personalisation (somewhere near the place you change your wallpaper)

You can also install GDI++, GDIPP, EZGDI or something similar to improve results and this works wonders!

I actually have already gone and recalibrated ClearType to make sure that wasn't the problem. Thanks for the recommendations of GDI++, GDIPP, EZGDI! I've never heard of them, so I'll go check them out!
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