Mac 1.8u40? Follow
I happened to notice that the experimental JDK bundled Mac download for the EAP14.1 includes a jre1.8u40 .
Is that new policy, or is there a specific reason?
ATB
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I'm hoping it's related to font rendering. The Oracle JDK font rendering is awful on Mac OS X and last time I checked Oracle weren't planning to fix it before Java 9. There was talk of JetBrains patching the Java 8 VM and bundling it with IntelliJ.
Having said that, I've tried the EAP version with the bundled JDK and the fonts look as terrible as ever.
I'm pretty sure that they have included this custom 1.8u40 build to handle MAC specific bugs in the JDK that impacts UIs, mostly related to sub-pixel rendering. It would be helpful if someone from the team could provide some information on what is included in the custom build and how this relates to the 1.8u40 snapshot builds available at https://jdk8.java.net.
Gesly
Font rendering in this new custom build looks really bad to me. Glyphs are uneven, with some strokes too thin, almost invisible.
Here's a screenshot of the iTerm using the same font (Input Mono). Much, much better.
On the Retina MAC, it looks like sub-pixel rendering has been enabled with the custom 8u40 build.
See attached screenshots of Intellij 14.1 EAP with the custom 8u40 and Intellij 14.0.3 EAP with the last available 8u40 build 23 from jdk8.java.net.
Attachment(s):
Intellij 14.0.3 EAP using the latest 1.8u40 build 23.png
Intellij EAP 14.1 with custom 1.8u40.png
It woudl be nice to hear from the JetBrains team on the changes.