Comments on: HOWTO: Configure IDEA Fonts http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2007/10/14/howto-configure-idea-fonts/ Technology and Geek Stuff by Eric Burke Thu, 04 Nov 2010 22:37:00 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: James Guice http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2007/10/14/howto-configure-idea-fonts/comment-page-1/#comment-6258 James Guice Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:06:10 +0000 http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2007/10/14/howto-configure-idea-fonts/#comment-6258 Thanks for the tip. IDEA 7 for me was using "IDEA (4.5 default)" as the theme. I already did have the "Use anti-aliased font in editor" checkbox turned on. Changing the the theme to "Windows", I notice there is somewhat more anti-aliasing going on, but it still is poor quality compared to native ClearType. I don't want to understate things, so I will bluntly say that the overall text clarity is very very poor in IDEA vs. Eclipse. This means the editor text, the menu text, all of it. I think there was an option in IDEA 6 to adjust the font kerning to better match the native platform, but that option seems gone. From what I understand that without special kerning, much of the goodness of sub-pixel rendering is not realized. The choice to create SWT was a very good move on IBM's part. The years have shown that "native Java" is a dead platform when it comes to building compelling end-user applications. Sun just doesn't "get it" when "it" has to do with anything outside of servers. It's getting awfully hard to justify paying top dollar for a Java IDE that cannot even render text as well as the native platform. Maybe JetBrains should look at ditching Swing and moving to SWT... Thanks for the tip. IDEA 7 for me was using “IDEA (4.5 default)” as the theme. I already did have the “Use anti-aliased font in editor” checkbox turned on. Changing the the theme to “Windows”, I notice there is somewhat more anti-aliasing going on, but it still is poor quality compared to native ClearType. I don’t want to understate things, so I will bluntly say that the overall text clarity is very very poor in IDEA vs. Eclipse. This means the editor text, the menu text, all of it.

I think there was an option in IDEA 6 to adjust the font kerning to better match the native platform, but that option seems gone. From what I understand that without special kerning, much of the goodness of sub-pixel rendering is not realized.

The choice to create SWT was a very good move on IBM’s part. The years have shown that “native Java” is a dead platform when it comes to building compelling end-user applications. Sun just doesn’t “get it” when “it” has to do with anything outside of servers.

It’s getting awfully hard to justify paying top dollar for a Java IDE that cannot even render text as well as the native platform. Maybe JetBrains should look at ditching Swing and moving to SWT…

]]>