I want my IDE anti-aliasing!

The anti-aliasing for the IDE option is gone in build 1071! Now I think I know the story behind this: Since JDK 1.4.2_02, the hack you were using to implement this feature is no longer available. This is why the feature hasn't worked for several builds now. For build 1071, the feature is missing altogether. Does this mean you are giving up on figuring out how to bring this feature back? Please tell me this is only temporary!!!

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billwhitelogin wrote:

The anti-aliasing for the IDE option is gone in build 1071! Now I think I know the story behind this: Since JDK 1.4.2_02, the hack you were using to implement this feature is no longer available. This is why the feature hasn't worked for several builds now. For build 1071, the feature is missing altogether. Does this mean you are giving up on figuring out how to bring this feature back? Please tell me this is only temporary!!!


Yes, we will try to find another hack, but definitely in the release
after Aurora.

--
Vladimir Kondratyev
Software Developer
JetBrains, Inc
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"

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I must say for my parts that this is a quite important feature. All
italic fonts (search window, konsole output) are quite unreadable if
they're not antialiased.

I however can understand that you wan't to postpone this feature until
after the release but it will be somewhat a setback for users of idea
3.0 that this feature is gone, and first impression is quite important.

On the other hand I just would like to thank the staff at JetBrains for
a brilliant, brilliant product.

Maron Kristofersson

Vladimir Kondratyev (JetBrains) wrote:

billwhitelogin wrote:

>> The anti-aliasing for the IDE option is gone in build 1071! Now I
>> think I know the story behind this: Since JDK 1.4.2_02, the hack you
>> were using to implement this feature is no longer available. This is
>> why the feature hasn't worked for several builds now. For build 1071,
>> the feature is missing altogether. Does this mean you are giving up
>> on figuring out how to bring this feature back? Please tell me this
>> is only temporary!!!


Yes, we will try to find another hack, but definitely in the release
after Aurora.


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"Maron Kristofersson" <maron@transistor.tv> wrote in message
news:bteq9e$9pl$1@is.intellij.net...

I must say for my parts that this is a quite important feature. All
italic fonts (search window, konsole output) are quite unreadable if
they're not antialiased.


IMHO antialiasing makes sense for low-res screens with high color depth.
Maybe it makes sense for LCD panels, but I did not find fonts processed with
Microsoft's ClearType quite readable, they are just blurry for me.

On hi-res monitors antialiasing makes no sense, it is just a hideout for
font developers not to clean up their work. Properly hinted TrueType or
Postscript fonts need no antialiasing. I personally hate any form of
antialiasing, it hurts my eyes making them trying to focus better.

BTW, maybe IntelliJ can make their own nice legible font. Borland products
have their own font, why not Idea?

Michael.


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Michael Jouravlev wrote:

"Maron Kristofersson" <maron@transistor.tv> wrote in message
news:bteq9e$9pl$1@is.intellij.net...

>>I must say for my parts that this is a quite important feature. All
>>italic fonts (search window, konsole output) are quite unreadable if
>>they're not antialiased.


IMHO antialiasing makes sense for low-res screens with high color depth.
Maybe it makes sense for LCD panels, but I did not find fonts processed with
Microsoft's ClearType quite readable, they are just blurry for me.

On hi-res monitors antialiasing makes no sense, it is just a hideout for
font developers not to clean up their work. Properly hinted TrueType or
Postscript fonts need no antialiasing. I personally hate any form of
antialiasing, it hurts my eyes making them trying to focus better.

BTW, maybe IntelliJ can make their own nice legible font. Borland products
have their own font, why not Idea?


Dunno about the font, but I was looking at another product I use
extensively, Magic Draw UML 7.2 Enterprise, and their anti aliasing for
the editor itself is not on either, and there seems to be no way to turn
that on. I don't remember seeing that in Netbeans either.

So JetBrains is not alone. The problem is that we need to push on Sun
to provide a proper way of doing that, not for people to have to come
out with hacks.

Just my 2cents.
R

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Back when I used a competing product (JB Ent v8) I found a plugin on their company's 'codecentral' site that added antialiasing to the editor and the IDE. I'm not sure how the author did it, but it appeared to me that he had somehow manipulated something at the Look and Feel level to implement the antialiasing. The plugin only worked for the Look and Feel theme that came with the IDE because the antialiasing would disappear when you switched to Metal, CDE or Windows LnF. But if you used the plugin combined with the custom Look and Feel that the IDE came with, the antialias would appear. Perhaps the secret can be found there?

I really like the antialiasing because I use nothing but flat panels and it makes all the difference in the world!

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Since it seems difficult to enable (editor-) font anti-aliasing, which font do you like best to use as an editor font?

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Editor font antialias is no problem. IDEA does that, and does good. The problem is enabling IDE font antialias.

By the way, I'm using Bitstream Vera Sans Mono[/url] as my editor font. Proggy Clean and Proggy Square are also very nice fonts for code, but currently available only as bitmap fonts -- Java can't read them.

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For the editor, I've found that a font named "Monospac821 BT" has a nice clean appearance, similar to Arial, but monospaced.

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Perhaps you all need to get an OS that does anti-aliasing of everything
for you. Like Mac OS X :)

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I could be wrong, but I think that the OS cannot do the anti-aliasing for me because Intellij is written in JFC/Swing. I've noticed that AWT and Eclipse applications will respect the anti-alias settings of Windows XP, which I think is because AWT and Eclipse rely on the OS to render the fonts. Swing uses the graphics system in the JVM and therefore ignores the anti-alias settings of Windows XP. I assumed this situation was the same on the Mac OS. Once again, I could be wrong in my reasoning here, but as best I can tell, the problem is in Swing, not the host OS.

:)

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In article <10058134.1073608115683.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net>,
billwhitelogin <no_mail@jetbrains.com> wrote:

I could be wrong, but I think that the OS cannot do the anti-aliasing for me
because Intellij is written in JFC/Swing. I've noticed that AWT and Eclipse
applications will respect the anti-alias settings of Windows XP, which I
think is because AWT and Eclipse rely on the OS to render the fonts. Swing
uses the graphics system in the JVM and therefore ignores the anti-alias
settings of Windows XP. I assumed this situation was the same on the Mac OS.
Once again, I could be wrong in my reasoning here, but as best I can tell,
the problem is in Swing, not the host OS.


All the text is anti-aliased in IDEA on my Mac OS X computer. I assume
it is Apple's doing, not IntelliJ's.

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Erik Hanson wrote:

In article <10058134.1073608115683.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net>,
billwhitelogin <no_mail@jetbrains.com> wrote:

>>I could be wrong, but I think that the OS cannot do the anti-aliasing for me
>>because Intellij is written in JFC/Swing. I've noticed that AWT and Eclipse
>>applications will respect the anti-alias settings of Windows XP, which I
>>think is because AWT and Eclipse rely on the OS to render the fonts. Swing
>>uses the graphics system in the JVM and therefore ignores the anti-alias
>>settings of Windows XP. I assumed this situation was the same on the Mac OS.
>> Once again, I could be wrong in my reasoning here, but as best I can tell,
>>the problem is in Swing, not the host OS.


All the text is anti-aliased in IDEA on my Mac OS X computer. I assume
it is Apple's doing, not IntelliJ's.


Yes Apple's redenring of swing is not like any other platform... that's
why it works there, check box or not.

R

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Hey Marcus, thanks for the info. I tried out the Bitstream Vera font and love it.

Tobin

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http://www.sf.net/projects/smoothmetal

Is what I currently use for products (and maintain, not that there's a lot happening). Works happily on JDK 1.4.2_03.

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There isn't any documentation for this. Do you just plug it into IntelliJ somehow?

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Well, I figured it out using this link: http://www.intellij.net/forums/thread.jsp?forum=5&thread=2916&message=82691&q=6c6f6f6b20616e64206665656c#82691

The only issue now is that the menus do not appear antialiased, but everything else does.

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Thanks for link to BitStream Vera fonts. Those look very nice as TrueType fonts under Windows XP!

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+1

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Well its not impossible, I downloaded a preview of codeguide's amethyst to mess around with back in time debugging and they have anti-aliasing available for editor and IDE stuff, they are running against 1.4.2_02.

So hopefully we will somehow squeak out a fix for aurora!

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It wouldn't be an open source project were it documented :)

Try UIManager.setLookAndFeel(SmoothLookAndFeelFactory.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());

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Whoops. Let's finish that post.

The factory gets the appropriate LnF for the current OS (There's no Mac support, as I don't have access to a Mac).

Otherwise:
smooth.metal.SmoothLookAndFeel for the Metal LnF.
smooth.windows.SmoothLookAndFeel for Windows.

Not sure why the menus wouldn't work as they work fine in my custom product here.

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I read that this functionality is planned for Java 1.5.1, or maybe 1.5. I think you will be able to completely control the RenderingHints used by the Graphics objects painting Swing components.

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You should try ProFontWindows. I've tried both and prefer ProFont. Looks
great at 9 pt and the brackets/parens, ones/els, os/zeros, etc... are very
distinguishable.

"Tobin Juday" <no_mail@jetbrains.com> wrote in message
news:12355343.1073656310285.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net...

Hey Marcus, thanks for the info. I tried out the Bitstream Vera font and

love it.
>

Tobin



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Is that the font that has no bold representation? There was a font that people were raving about a while back, but the only drawback was that there was no bold for the font. I do use bold in my code formatting, so that ruled it out for me.

I don't remember the name of it though... maybe it's not the same one. I'll try to find it.

Tobin

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I found it. There was discussion about it. I've seen the screenshots of it (from the seekingprofont website) and I don't like it that much. I think I'll stick with what I've got for now. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Tobin

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This is still getting fixed in Pallada right?

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bump

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Is this going to be fixed in Pallada or what?

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