Faint font in 10.5

Looks like anti-aliasing is kicking in in 10.5, perhaps it wasn't
supported in the JDK of your old version.  You can try unchecking Use
anti-aliased font under Settings|Appearance.

N.

On 01/07/2011 19:33, Suzanne Dorman wrote:

I have been using 7.0.4 and am currently evaluating 10.5.  I have the exact same editor font settings it both products, however, the font is very faint in 10.5.  I have Monospaced 13 with "use anti aliased font".  I've tried bolding the font but that just makes the characters thicker.

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Even the window fonts appear differently even though I have the same settings (IDEA 4.5 look and feel with MS Reference Sans Serif 14).  My main reason for using IntelliJ over other IDEs is the readability of the fonts.  But 10.5 is too hard to see.  Any explanation as to why the exact same settings result in a significant difference in appearance?  Any suggestions on how to make the font "stronger" (at least in the editor)?

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I have attached a screen print that shows 10.5 on the left and 7.0.4 on the right.

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Thanks,
Suzanne Dorman

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Original message URL: http://devnet.jetbrains.net/message/5308049#5308049

It's not IDEA per se, it's the version of JRE it runs on.
I remember that it happened to me too at some point: after an upgrade, stock fonts started to look totally rubbish in IDEA editor, no matter anti-aliased or not (I also run it on Windows).
In the end, after some experimenting with different typefaces, I started using Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, 12pt, 1.1 line spacing, which looks pretty good on my screen.
Give it a go, it's freely distributed, perhaps you'll like it and become a little happier.

No, the anti-aliasing worked fine in the older version.  In fact, setting it made a huge difference.  Thanks for the suggestion though.

I haven't changed the version of the JRE.  Because I'm still on eval for 10.5, I run 10.5 for some projects and 7.0.4 for other projects - all using the same jdk, etc.  My co-workers have noticed the differences as well.

I played with the Vera Sans Mono font when version 7 came out (seems every new version of IntelliJ has font changes) but I couldn't use that font long term.  Unfortunately, my eyes keep getting older even though the rest of me hasn't aged a bit!

Thanks for trying to help.

Between your comment and Nathan's, I started thinking about the JDK more (even though I haven't changed versions).

A quick search brought me to the following discussion:

http://devnet.jetbrains.net/message/5257687

I tried Alex's suggestion of changing idea.exe.vmoptions to have -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on

It did effect the appearance.  The reserved keywords, static vars, etc stand out much more now (almost like IntelliJ 7) but the regular black text doesn't look good (not clear and smooth).  The black text on the menus is effected in the same way.

Even though turning anti-aliasing on and off in IntelliJ results in noticeable differences, the result is not the same as setting the anti-aliasing via awt property.

Since IntelliJ is swing (I think), I tried the swing setting: -Dswing.aatext=true

Not surprisingly, this setting had no effect.  It is probably the same as turning anti-aliasing on via IntelliJ.

I would still like to know what's different between 7 and 10.5 that is effecting the fonts so I could (possibly) find something that will be close to what I had.

I found this thread while googling trying to figure out what happened to the fonts between 10.0.3 and 10.5.1.  In 10.5.1 I was seeing a problem with the courier font in the code window.  It looked terrible.  See second screen shot.  I tried the suggestions in this thread and nothing changed.  I was running with idea64.exe and then compared to idea.exe and found that it did not have the problem.  Turns out the 32 exe runs with Java 6 and the 64 bit version runs with an EA version of Java 7.  You can see which VM version is in use in the about box.  I then went ahead and changed the idea.bat file to have IDEA_JDK point to my 64 bit JDK 1.6 directory.  Running with a 64 bit VM that way (like I did with 10.0.3) did not exhibit the problem.  The first screen shot is running IDEA with a 1.6.0_21 JDK and the second is with a 1.7 EA JDK, both 64 bit.