I have tested it on a few different Windows machines and with different (including the latest version) versions of LibreOffice, but the results were always the same. Font anti-aliasing does not work, if OpenGL is enabled. Disabling OpenGL significantly degrades the UI performance, so I cannot disable it.
So, my question is, are there any Windows computers (different CPU/graphics, etc) on which anti-aliasing works with OpenGL? Or are ALL Windows computers experiencing the same problem?
This is a problem of the graphics card. Newer graphics cards support OpenGL.
All right, what graphics card is guaranteed to work? I have a latest AMD graphics card, and anti-aliasing does not work on Windows.
I don’t no. That you should ask the manufacturers of graphics cards.
You can also inform yourself here about the basics.
No.
Not for current versions of LibreOffice.
But this issue is not because of OpenGL.
The text rendering engine was updated/changed in LO v5.3.
This broke the anti-aliasing on Windows.
There no longer is full ClearType sub-pixel anti-aliasing.
Now Windows anti-aliasing is only grayscale, and only one direction.
Take a screenshot of your text using 10-11 pt type at 100% in LO and then look at that image at high zoom.
You will see only gray pixels anti-aliasing.
Use the Separate Install GUI tool to install v5.2.5.1 and compare the text at the pixel level.
You will also notice the odd character spacing issue (gaps) at smaller sizes is also gone.
Do the same screenshot again - and you will see the full color sub-pixel anti-aliasing.
Note the issue is in LibreOffice which is using the very old GDI instead of DirectWrite.
Microsoft fixed this with the release of DirectWrite and ClearType about 10 years ago.
LO 5.3 on Windows broke the quality text rendering of previous versions.
What you have now is basically going back to the Windows XP era.
.
Are there any plans to fix it? I mean, as a word processor, this seems to be a big issue. I noticed this a few years ago.
This is only partially true.
LibreOffice uses DirectWrite almost exclusively (except for printing, where GDI is used). This all is not about antialiasing - it’s about sub-pixel glyph positioning, which is actually missing now (not because of new engine - HarfBuzz - which has this ability, but because of using integers in calculations) and is tdf#103322.
Wrt any plans - no one is working on that ATM; any help is appreciated.
Yes the rounding is also an issue.
But that is not the only issue per the various other comments in the tracker.
I think I have now saved links to all the relevant comments.
Need to summarize them along with the screenshots which demonstrate the problems.
Text rendering on Windows now is really bad.
Users should know why it looks like crap.
Perhaps with a clear explanation and open discussion of the problems,
a talented person with the needed skills can be recruited to actually fix it.
Expecting anyone to wade through a bunch of scattered bug reports and somehow magically arrive at the needed solution, and then volunteer to fix it … is just silly.