Idea/antialiasing/Mustang

"swing.aatext" property already works in 1.5. But it isn't a subpixel antialiasing.

Cool! Didn't know.

I see, that it isn't subpixel. Anyway, there is aliased text in Idea after this option is set even in 1.5.

Subpixel antialiasing now works in last Mustang (b39). Looks great! Metal and Idea 4.5 L&F support it partitially (as it was mentioned above). Alloy L&F doesn't support it at all. Waiting for a fix, I do not think, that it is very difficult fix.

Does anybody know if anyone from JetBrains has made an 'official' comment regarding anti-aliasing support for the UI in the next release?

IDEA (and to be fair, other Java apps too) can look pretty ugly on Linux, especially with a TFT screen, right now.

I am currently using the Swing aatext hack described above, but too much of the UI is still not anti-aliased - tree views, dialogs and so on.

With this new mustang feature text looks great! I think that this new subpixel a/a is "a must" for Idea 5.

is "a must" for Idea 5.

Calm down here. You're free to experiment with mustang but it absolutely
not supported. Please do not report any IDEA bugs happened when running under
mustang unless you're able to reproduce the problem under 1.5 or 1.4.

Sorry, but we certainly have other things to do before 5.0 shipment.

-

Maxim Shafirov
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"

No, I do not ask you to support mustang's subpixel a/a. But I see, that Metal L&F supports a/a and Alloy - does not. May be it's easy to turn on may be not - I don't know. But if it's easy why not? Everybuddy will be happy, I'm sure.

Alexander,

Did you need to do anything different than setting the swing.aatext property in order to see such good results?

No. With this setting Idea 4.5 L&F and Metal L&F get subpixel antialiasing.

But the most significant changes I saw in demo SwingSet2. Outstanding fonts!

"Alexander Babaev" <no_mail@jetbrains.com> wrote in message
news:3929683.1118072705501.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net...

No. With this setting Idea 4.5 L&F and Metal L&F get

subpixel antialiasing.
>

But the most significant changes I saw in demo SwingSet2.

Outstanding fonts!

I personally think that automatic antialiasing of every font on the screen is a deeply flawed idea. Should antialiasing be needed at all, it must happen for each font separately, for each letter, for each font size, in proper places selectively. Instead, some create a crappy font, then others try to make it look nice with antialiasing. At least Apple and MS still pay some attention to fonts (at least, payed before, and we still use these fine fonts). I am happy to use Windows, and I always turn "smooth edges of screen fonts" off. Cannot stand fonts that do not look sharp, my eyes get tired too quickly. ]]>

That was a Monday rant. No reason to start a flame war ;)

Alexander Babaev wrote:

Subpixel antialiasing now works in last Mustang (b39). Looks great! Metal and Idea 4.5 L&F support it partitially (as it was mentioned above). Alloy L&F doesn't support it at all.

I'm curious: how did You get b39
Mustang homepage offers only b38 right now ..

Karol

There is a file on a server, but no link on it :) You can go to mustang's feedback forum, link was mentioned there.

With this new mustang feature text looks great! I
think that this new subpixel a/a is "a must" for Idea
5.

Just tried running IDEA 4.5.4 with Mustang. It sure looks great =). And the 'infamous' grey rectangle is TOTALLY gone! The whole GUI feels much more snappier because of that. Both the client and server (dev. software) seem to be just happy with Mustang.

So far no problems. Debugging works with same kludge setup that I was using for Tiger (copied the tools jar from JDK 1.4.2 to IDEA's lib folder)

Looking forward to a stable build of Irida to use Mustang with!!

So far no problems.

After two..three hours of use idea froze in the middle of build process. The 4.5.4 hasn't done that to me in months so I guess there're some incompatibility issues or issues with Mustang itself.

Also the line numbering and other symbols in the left of editor would get corrupted when scrolling down the source file.

Short advice: Idea 4.5.4 with Mustang B39 isn't ready for prime time. Pity - it looks and feels much better otherwise..

I use b38 and b39 for about a week. Idea is stable. All bugs I can see present in other JVM's too. No lockups, no strange situations... Mustang is very good for Idea 5 development.

Mustang is very good for Idea 5 development.

Nice if that's the case =). Idea 5 however - is not yet - very good for development.

Build 3368 with Mustang, and especially with the new Alloy themes, looks really pretty on my Linux setup with LCD screen now.

Very nice indeed.

What you mean you don't need more L&Fs added??? They've actually reach
a point of satisfaction / market saturation? :)

R