Which program triggers the problem? Specify the filename if possible.

What steps will reproduce the problem? 1. Open Chrome 2. View any web page

What is the expected output? What do you see instead? Expect to see fonts render as normal. When updated to dev build 18, all font rendering is broken and unreadable.

What version of gdipp (including renderer)? On which operating system? 0.91 x64 on Windows7 x64

Please provide any additional information below. Screenshots always help.

I can confirm this is happening on my site as well. It used to affect text rendered in Chrome with a CSS text-shadow property only. Subsequent Chrome updates fixed the issue after the text rendering engine was switched back to an older one. Now with development build 18, all text is affected.

Same here too. Bloody unreadable. wtf >_<

Happening to me too. Looks exactly like the above screenshots, disabling gdipp fixes it.

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I've noticed that if you change the fonts used by Google Chrome to something else will more than likely fix it.

The font that was affected for me, was "Arial" - so I changed the font to Segoe WP Black (one of the Windows Phone 7 fonts).

Chrome 18 Beta in Windows 7 64 with gdipp. See my screenshots attached. Some text becomes entirely unreadable.

Chrome 18 has been promoted to the beta channel, so this is afecting many more people now. All text is unreadable when gdipp is enabled. Here's a brief explanation of what changed on the rendering engine: http://blog.chromium.org/2012/02/gpu-accelerating-2d-canvas-and-enabling.html

some workaround. it's work for me

1. load chrome://flags/
2. disable GPU compositing on all pages, Composited render layer borders, GPU Accelerated Drawing
3. relaunch Chrome

Comment #8 didn't work for me; those options were already disabled so I could only "enable" them. I did this for all three of them, restarted Chrome and the text still looks blurry. Using Chrome 18.0.1025.33 beta-m, gdipp 0.9.1

i have the same problems using gdipp v0.7.6 :(

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Chrome was rendering HTML5 canvas text nicely until recent Chrome releases. Unfortunately, canvas text rendering is terrible (especially compared to FF & IE9)now, regardless of GPU & other about:flags settings.

Anyone with a workaround for this?

i added this line chrome.exe in to disabled gdipp.

the text is barely ledgible, how do i disable gdipp?

Run services.msc, find the 32 and 64 bit instances of gdipp, and click stop for each.

cant find any intances of gdipp

Any workarounds? Really want to use GDIPP. But it fonts in G chrome was broken.

My workaround was to downgrade Chrome back to 17 and turn off auto updates until a better solution can be found.

Been looking for a download link to chrome 17, would you be able to share where you got it from?

THanks

i downgraded as well, you can download it from http://www.oldversion.com/Google-Chrome.html or get it from portableapps.com

I got my copy of v.17 from FileHippo.com.

I think this is happening because Chrome 18 enables hardware acceleration for Canvas.

This is really shitty, why has it not been fixed? Turning off auto-updates would be awkward

I'm downgrading to 17 as well which is ridiculous for stable channel.

Chromium Issue: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=96662

We're taking a look.

Yes, please fix this. Some sites' text displays fine, but some don't. I don't want to downgrade, but I'll probably switch to firefox eventually.

Copy pasting a comment from Chromium bug tracker (crbug.com/133777) that should be relevant in fixing gdipp:

"(From Chrome 18) Skia relies on GetGlyphOutlineW for metrics. The current tip of tree gdipp does not hook this call, so Skia cannot reliably know what to expect. There is also a development branch of gdipp (which now appears to be closed) which does hook GetGlyphOutlineW (this is the branch patched in the above linked issue). However, the hook is only reliable on the identity transform. In order to achieve certain functionality, Skia almost never uses an identity transform with GDI. As a result, even gdipp 0.9.1 does not sufficiently implement GDI in order to support Skia."

hoping this gets fixed soon. my chrome is so ugly :(

Latest update from our tracker:

"While GetGlyphOutlineW is an issue as stated above, it does not explain the ugliness of what is seen. As it turns out, the way Chrome uses Skia, Skia always asks for GDI to draw the text at a size of 64 and uses SetWorldTransform to scale to the appropriate size. What GDI does is hint at 64, apply the transform to the outline, and then rasterize. Gdipp, on the other hand, is rasterizing with freetype at a size of 64 and then using BitBlt from a temporary surface into the destination surface. BitBlt is not known for its rescaling ability, and this appears to be most of the issue. As an experiment I forced all text to 64 pixels and everything looks suprisingly good (though very large)"

Maybe this wasn't clear: the issue is on the gdipp side. MacType had a similar issue which has been fixed as of yesterday.

There is nothing we can do on the Chromium/Chrome side.

I'd definitely recommend people use http://mactype.googlecode.com/ at least until the issue is fixed in gdipp.

I've been testing mactype for 2 hours and it does a great job, but that thing is very unstable in windows 7 64bit (2 system restarts, open firefox and it crashes when service is started).

Also, I couldn't find any documentation/help about mactype. Although, as I said, it does a good job on chrome 18+, it seems we should wait until giving mactype a chance.

I switched to the "old-heavy-weight" firefox in the meantime. I think I'll be back to chrome when Gdipp solves the problem.

Saludos!

Jesus, what version of MacType are you using? I have been using it for about a week now (Win7 x64) and haven't had a single problem.

This is the version I am using: http://code.google.com/p/mactype/

I wish that Windows would just offer this type of font smoothing natively.

what config are you using? I installed mactype as a service and in registry and both gave me problems.

you may have to start mactype as a tray app, which gives you the maximum stability and flexibility.

MacType does solve the issue but fonts don't look anywhere near as good as with gdipp.

Like flyingsn... said, I use MacType as a tray app. It gives you the flexibility of switching rendering modes on the fly.

Cka..., have you tried some of the different profiles in MacType? The LCD profile looks identical to GDIPP. Also, you can tweak the heck out of any of the profiles or create your own. If you install via the registry or otherwise use the default profile, the fonts won't look as nice. Set up MacType with the tray app and use the LCD profile, and I think you'll be happy with it.

Hi Kenji, thanks for the comment. As I understand, this issue is similar to the Windows GTK problem, i.e., lack of rescaling (issue 24). Correct me if I'm wrong. What does Skia need? A compatible and full-fledged GetGlyphOutlineW or text output function on a transformed DC?

The tip version is not the source code of 0.9.1. It is not related to this issue.

Thanks crendking.

Some additional info from the MacType author on our bug tracker: "According to the webkit updates, Chrome begin to use internal bitmap bitblt to accelerate GDI text rendering, which makes shadow function of gdipp and mactype invalid. Moreover, chrome begin to use GDI coordinate transformation to draw GDI text, this is what causes gdipp render messed. The new MacType now support render text on DCs which has transformation enabled, thus the chrome can be smoothed"

You might want to check MacType's source code to find out how this exactly translate: http://code.google.com/p/mactype/source/checkout

Let me know if it still is unclear what needs to be done.

Hmm, sorry it seems that there are no source code access to MacType. I can try to arrange a discussion with the author if needed.

I'd also like to confirm that MacType using the Tray option is a big success. I've been using gdipp for so long, but I wish I had found Mactype earlier. It's a far superior utility that picked where gdipp left off. It's a substantial improvement in quality of the fonts, IMO.

I have tried MacType. And it runs very well on both my Win7 x64 and WinXP machines.

I tried all the profiles and the LCD is best, but still it doesn't look as good as gdipp on my IPS monitors. Text looks too dark. Maybe I'll try tweaking the profile.

I agree, none of the default profiles were perfect, so I created this one that I think is even better than what I had from gdipp:

http://www.silspd.com/Mactype.zip

Indeed, Mactype has sped up the process and actually has a GUI provided to choose how you want it to run. Better then a limitation of services. iOS is the best font on Mactype imo and comment 44 didn't really go well for me.

Isn't MacType based on the old gdi++ code?

Didn't gdipp just incorporate Easyhook? I mean gdipp and Mactype both started out with gdi++

Installed v17 chrome and worked well. I was playing with Chrome flags (chrome://flags/) and I discovered font is rendered incorrectly when "GPU Accelerated Drawing" is enabled. Once disabled some sites with big amount of images lag a bit, but the font is as it's supposed to be.

But, in program files/GDIPP, you can open the xml with a notepad an make an exclusion ( at the end) for the chrome.exe!!

...Or: disable "GPU Accelerated Drawing" like said before!!

Disabling "GPU Accelerated Drawing" does not work for me. In fact, I think I've tried every possible 'disable' related with GPU, WegGL and/or accelerated-something.

I've also tried using http://drwatson.nobody.jp/gdi++/ (I don't know why, just hoping it would help...), but got no results.

Is there any workaround?

Thanks

(about the workaround) OK. I didn't know ezgdi was running on my machine... Once I've uninstalled it, Chrome problems were solved.

Workaround worked for me. Edit C:\Program Files(x86)\gdipp_setting.xml and add a line

chrome.exe

in the section to disable gdipp.

Then reboot or Run services.msc, find the 32 and 64 bit instances of gdipp and restart each one.

PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM THE EMAIL LIST I DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT GDIPP

Remove yourself, dammit!

Font rendering in Chrome is horrible. Simply compare any page in Chrome to the same in Firefox or IE9 and the differences are plain as day. Jagged rough edges that do not appear anti aliased/hinted vs those that are smooth and crisp. The differences are especially noticeable on medium sized display/headline text. Smoothing hacks no longer work, although they shouldn't have ever been necessary in the first place. This doesn't seem to be something the Chrome dev team wants to address since it hasn't been dealt with at all during the entire lifetime of the product, but it is a major issue.

Is anything happening with this issue? Font rendering is so bad in Chrome that I loathe to think about people visiting my sites with this browser and seeing what is supposed to be impeccable typography marred by nasty jaggy type. When can we expect a fix to bring this browser up to par visually with Firefox, IE9 and Safari?

In re: comment 57: I'm not sure what you think the issue is here. The only people who would be experiencing bad type on your site are the same people experiencing bad type on ALL the websites they go to on Chrome to a degree that it is unreadable and therefore unusable. Chrome is simply not used at all if GDIPP is still enabled with it, so I'm not clear why you would have any fear with your site particularly. The only people running GDIPP are people with the brains to install it anyway, not general public.

This thread is dead. GDIPP can't hold a finger to Mactype and Chrome can be disabled in GDIPP independently if you really have some attachment to it. Issue resolved. If you have some other issue with text rendering on Chrome not related to GDIPP, then start a new thread.

OK, let me put it another way. Font rendering in Chrome is terrible full stop. When is this going to be fixed?

And I quote myself,

"If you have some other issue with text rendering on Chrome not related to GDIPP, then start a new thread."

comment 58: "GDIPP can't hold a finger to Mactype..."

I do not agree. From what I can gather Mactype is based on the older gdi++, whereas gdipp is rewritten from scratch and therefore a more modern implementation.

It's obviously unfortunate that version of Chrome after 17.0.963.83 cause rendering issues, but I am still hopeful that these will be addressed in a future gdipp release.

Comment 53 worked for me, thanks a lot. :)

Chrome renders my website's font in an awful way , FireFox similarly , IE is the best.

Funny thing using Google Fonts which Google's browser renders poorly .. what a joke.

I too faced the similar issue with Chrome the menu font are displayed in a bad way in Chrome browser. I tried to update the Chrome to version 23.0.1271.1 and the fonts are good. They are as is, my guess its not using the gdipp font rendering and rest of the windows applications are using it!

Comment 53 worked for me TOO yeah :D thanks!

My type/font are raggedy and screen background is not solid but dot screen. Please HELP. My eyesight is not that good. Minerva Coyne@gmail.com

Mine is completely unreadable.

Comment #53 is a functioning workaround, so do that if you're still having problems.

To edit an .xml file, right click it and Open With. . . in Notepad

When you've added the new line of code(see #53), Save As. . . it to the desktop without renaming it

Once saved, drag it into the original folder containing the .xml file

Overwrite the original with the new edit, and you're good to go.

The reason for this is .xml files are typically not supposed to be edited, so you can't just save it in the Notepad.

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I am getting this problem with version 30.0.1599.101 m on Windows 7. All suggestions have been tried, including reset to original default setting. The pages with the weird characters also include properly rendered text. When cut and pasted into notepad weird text displays correctly.

Windows Registry editing fixed the font thickness issue for me completely, we can tune the font thickness/darkness by calibrating FONTSMOOTHINGGAMMA value to between 150 and 190 hexadecimal( 336 to 400 decimal )

• START -> RUN -> REGEDIT
• search for FONTSMOOTHINGGAMMA by keying "Ctrl F" ( will automatically take us to CurrentUser\ControlPanel\Desktop path)
• double-click mouse on FONTSMOOTHINGGAMMA enter any thing between 150 and 190 hexadecimal. (the Lower the value, the thicker the fonts.)
• close the REGEDIT tool
• LOGOFF and then LOGON

Now all the fonts are very thick & very dark in Chrome Browser.

But we must make sure that ClearType smoothing is enabled in Windows ( controlPanel -> personalization -> appearance -> Effects -> ClearType smooth check (ticked box) )

                     OR  alternately in RegEdit ...

         FONTSMOOTHING=2
         FONTSMOOTHINGTYPE=2
         FONTSMOOTHINGORIENTATION=1  for LCD-screen,  0 for CRT-screen