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Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

developer.chrome.com

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Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#101

Post by wtallis »

DeathRay2K wrote: post #89
wtallis wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually probably reporting the software-configured resolution, not the hardware capability. The important distinction is whether it's a system-wide resolution setting or a game-specific setting that may not apply to browser contexts (except for the ones used by Steam itself).

What makes you think that it’s more likely reporting a software-configured resolution? It is after all a hardware survey, and focused on what user hardware supports.

It's vastly simpler, and more useful, for Steam to detect the current resolution. Trying to detect the maximum supported resolution is non-trivial, especially when there are devices that will accept a 4k signal despite having fewer pixels.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#102

Post by KurtCS »

Whomever6342 wrote: post #92

Why does Chromium need to manually set default contrast/gamma values instead of just reading Windows' default ClearType values? The article mentions they added support for reading ClearType Tuner values last year, so why aren't the Windows defaults available through the same API? Seems unnecessarily complex to maintain separate defaults.

Developer of this feature and author of the blog post here. Good questions and I can elaborate. As you mentioned, Chromium does read ClearType Tuner values and passes them on to Skia them if they're set (I implemented this behavior last year).

However, most users don't run the ClearType Tuner. This announcement is basically that we are now using values that match the default ClearType contrast and gamma. There's no extra complexity or separate defaults. This behavior shipped later because it has a much larger impact on the user base.

This wasn't happening automatically because Chromium doesn't user DirectWrite for text rasterization, so they were missing default Windows behaviors like the ClearType Tuner integration and Windows default values.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#103

Post by [deleted] »

wtallis wrote: post #101
DeathRay2K wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that it’s more likely reporting a software-configured resolution? It is after all a hardware survey, and focused on what user hardware supports.

It's vastly simpler, and more useful , for Steam to detect the current resolution. Trying to detect the maximum supported resolution is non-trivial, especially when there are devices that will accept a 4k signal despite having fewer pixels.

[deleted]

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#104

Post by perching_aix »

BearOso wrote: post #90
Tadpole9181 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LG used WRGB striping. Also, this isn't true? The blur busters founder (Mark Rejhon) has worked a lot on this exact issue and already has defined shaders and approaches to arbitrary subpixel geometry text shaders in the PowerToys repos (no thanks to Microsoft). His approach is based on the Freestyle HarmonyLCD subpixel rendering approach which has supported non-striped layouts for over 6 years . We're currently block…

LG was RWBG, but newer panels use RGWB, which works better with subpixel. I wasn't aware of the FreeType harmony approach, but it looks like there's some problems, like no FIR filtering. The rapidly changing subpixel arrangements would also be difficult to accommodate. They'd have to have a new DDC command or something to poll the panel's subpixel matrix. I imagine by the time they got that through the standards bodi…

The latest EDID version does support quite a few arrangements, all the ones in the real world at the moment included afaik.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#105

Post by perching_aix »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #30
calebh wrote: post #29

It would be great if we could also go ahead and fix subpixel anti-aliasing for OLED screens. People have been been trying for years to get Microsoft's attention about this issue. [1] The subpixel layout of OLED screens is different than the the traditional layout, so text ends up looking pretty bad. Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. I'm surprised that none of the display manufacturers h…

They should just ditch ClearType and use grayscale AA like Acrobat used to have. PPI is high enough on modern displays that the reduction in resolution won't matter.

Yes it does matter.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#106

Post by TheRealPomax »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #70
calebh wrote: post #29

It would be great if we could also go ahead and fix subpixel anti-aliasing for OLED screens. People have been been trying for years to get Microsoft's attention about this issue. [1] The subpixel layout of OLED screens is different than the the traditional layout, so text ends up looking pretty bad. Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. I'm surprised that none of the display manufacturers h…

> The subpixel layout of OLED screens is different than the the traditional layout, so text ends up looking pretty bad. Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. Patching ClearType is unfortunately not as straightforward as it should have been. In an ideal world, you just change the sampling kernel your rasterizer uses to match the subpixel layout (with perceptual corrections) and you’re done.…

Raster Tragedy should have been called the Raster Disaster. Mostly because I keep calling it that and looking for the wrong thing every single time I want to link to it.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#107

Post by perching_aix »

jeffbee wrote: post #98
kccqzy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore it's not just that it didn't look identical to the rest of the OS. There is in fact no culture for Windows apps to conform to the platform specific look and feel. A long time ago people were discussing inconsistent ClearType use in Microsoft's own apps like Office and Internet Explorer: it turned out that both Office and IE had their own settings for enabling or ignoring ClearType. In my opinion, that cho…

Yeah as a person who only uses Microsoft Windows when absolutely necessary, who consequently has not been conditioned to overlook its many quirks, I find it hilarious that someone would judge an app for not being consistent with the look and feel. To see how unrealistic this complaint is, all you have to do is launch the Control Panel, then launch the Device Manager, and compare them.

Not sure why, this is like fallacies 101. Just because many other surrounding applications are inconsistent in their presentation, that doesn't mean this situation should be worsened.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#108

Post by perching_aix »

calebh wrote: post #29

It would be great if we could also go ahead and fix subpixel anti-aliasing for OLED screens. People have been been trying for years to get Microsoft's attention about this issue. [1] The subpixel layout of OLED screens is different than the the traditional layout, so text ends up looking pretty bad. Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. I'm surprised that none of the display manufacturers h…

> Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue.

And what would be the others? The hopelessly huge number of screenshots for example will forever have the regular smoothing baked in.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#109

Post by jayd16 »

wtallis wrote: post #52
jayd16 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you just saying they're not as bright or is there something more there?

On OLEDs, high levels of ambient light hitting the monitor tends to wash out blacks, making them appear dark gray, thereby subverting one of the most clear-cut advantages of OLED.

I guess I see this in bright, direct sunlight on Samsung Galaxy phones but its really not an issue, especially for a monitor.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#110

Post by e4m2 »

alternatetwo wrote: post #87
dist-epoch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox does not use GDI, it used DirectWrite which is GPU accelerated.

It most certainly uses GDI for Verdana. Firefox tried to disable that by overwriting the previous default setting for gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.force_gdi_classic_for_families and gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.force_gdi_classic_max_size, but restoring them fixed that. Also this is not important. What's important is that DirectWrite does not render this font correctly, if you compare it with LibreOffice…

It just uses GDI_CLASSIC for DWRITE_MEASURING_MODE [1] and DWRITE_RENDERING_MODE [2] in that case. No actual GDI in sight.

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/dcommon/...

[2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/dwrite/n...

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