Name: bsT130419 Date: 09/13/2001


java version "1.3.1"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.1-b24)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.1-b24, mixed mode)

or

java version "1.4.0-beta2"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.0-beta2-b77)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.0-beta2-b77, mixed mode)


This is reproducible on 98,ME,2000 & XP.

* From right click on desktop click "Properties"

* From the plus tab select font smoothing (or clear type from XP's
Appearance/Effects/Font Smoothing ... where it's more obvious)

* Apply the settings.

* Inspecting any TTF/OTF font from any (non-java) program in detail should
reveal anti-aliasing behavior (this will not apply to rasterized fonts such as
System or Lucidia or Courier ). A typical example may be courier new italic
under notepad at a large size. Notice the smoothness of an l or I when it is
italic.


* Go to %JAVA_HOME% (pick your favorite jdk) and run the stylepad demo
in /demo/jfc/Stylepad with ../../../bin/java -jar Stylepad.jar

* Compare the results to what you saw with notepad. Pick any equivalent font.
Set the size equally high. It will be jagged. There will be no way (other then
to set the Rendering hint programmatically to force anti-aliased output) to
produce anti-aliased results.

It would be nice if this setting followed the OS default.

The antialias setting is a combination of the font-quality flag passed in at
the time the font is created (it should be highest-quality not 0 ) and the
surface the text is drawn on (printers for example are not antialiased).

I have tried to modify this default by search/replacing the font quality on
all create fonts that I could find in awt.dll and jawt.dll without success
which leads me to believe the problem is related to the property of the
drawing surface or a font created in Graphics2D. I would bet that a flag on
the creation of the drawing surface would fix the problem.
(Review ID: 131598)
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