Mac OS-X and JDK 1.7 Update 40

I agree. It doesn't look good on a retina display Macbook Pro either.

I'm also very confused by this blog post: Font rendering: Apple JDK 6 vs Oracle JDK 1.7.0_40

When I run the IntelliJ 13 EAPs with JDK 1.7.0_40-b43 (with 11pt Menlo in the editor), the font rendering looks far far from being a native OS X program (which are rendered by Quartz). I can't speak of the colors, but the text not only doesn't look like native programs, it looks really bad.

There are also severe bugs—mainly layout related issues where the rendered text has lots of inserted whitespace everywhere—but that's not the issue that's worrying me. I'm worried this text rendering will make Java applications feel even more out of place in OS X.

There are known font rendering issues in JDK 7 u 40 that require
additional work around code to be added to IntelliJ IDEA codebase. Such
code is present in 132.325+ EAP builds.

On 9/11/2013 8:34 PM, Peter Jacobsen wrote:

I tried the new JDK release - basically it works with IU132.106. The About screen now does not flash anymore but the font rendering with the standard settings is really bad (on a non-retina display). I will stick with the Apple JDK 1.6 for now. A real disappointment.

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Peter

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Original message URL: http://devnet.jetbrains.net/message/5498943#5498943

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Hello. So I ran into problems hunting down "JDK 1.7 update 40":

1. Apple stopped officially supporting Java at 1.6 (probably around the update 39 that I have).
2. The newest JRE is update 40. However it only seems to be available in the browser, and neither as a command line JRE or a JDK. Even after updating IntelliJ's plist it's picking up 1.7.0_17 even after installing 1.7.0_40. Additionally, java_home doesn't report that the _40 JVM is available at the command line. (Inferring from the uninstallation instructions that this only adds a web plugin to your system)
3. I did find the newest JDK on Oracles site, but it is JDK 1.7.0u25, not u40. I installed this, and IntelliJ runs but has a variety of problems.
   1. Starts in a strange state, the window is tiny in the lower left portion of the screen.
   2. The entire window looks low-resolution.
   3. The about dialog box flickers and disappears.

I would be happy to try IJ under update 40, but as it doesn't seem to get picked up by IntelliJ as the 1.7 JRE, and it also doesn't appear in /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines, 1.7u25 is the best I can do at the moment, and that seems pretty bad (although, really, I'll take a bad display over losing data any day).

So, please: tell me what I should do.

Is there some way for me to run IJ under 1.7u40?

Should I not attempt to run under 1.7u25?

Should I try to repair my 1.6 installation? If so, how do I do that?

UPDATE: IJ tech support gave me a link for the JDK 1.7u40:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1880260.html

Thanks,

Josh

Reference links:

Oracle's installation instructions: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/webnotes/install/mac/mac-jdk.html

Link to the most recent JRE, 1.7u40 http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

Link to the most recent JDK, 1.7u25 (requires an oracle account and interactively accepting the Oracle license agreement) http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/java-archive-downloads-javase7-521261.html#jdk-7u25-oth-JPR

Link explaining how to tell IJ to switch to Java 1.7 https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/entries/23455956

Java 6 us End-Of-Life: http://java.com/en/download/faq/other_jreversions.xml

How to uninstall JRE 1.7_40 (note that it's just a single file called JavaPlugin.app) http://java.com/en/download/help/mac_uninstall_java.xml

I tried IntelliJ IDEA 13 build 133.124 with JRE 1.7.0_45 bundled on OS-X 10.9 - the fonts are still washed out and terrible to read. I do not understand the advantage of bundling IDEA with a JRE that is practically useless. Please do not release the final version with JRE 1.7 bundled if the font problem is not solved. I would prefer to use Apple JRE 1.6 for the font crispness and try out new JRE 1.7 releases by playing with the Info.plist file.

Thanks and Regards,
Peter

I'm also experiencing font display and layout issues that are rendering the latest EAP unusable with the bundled JDK.

Are these known issues?

Switching back to JDK 1.6 causes IDEA to hang for me when I try to load a Scala project. It stops at "Preparing editors to open..." .