How to smooth fonts in Libreoffice Writer 6.4?

[ThinkingMonkey]

Hi all,

I noticed a while back that Writer text didn’t look very smooth but I chalked it up to it just being different software than other word processors.

However, today I had occasion to copy and paste the text into Wordpad and noticed quite a difference. And WordPad is not widely known for its smooth font rendering. I don’t have Word installed but I’m betting the fonts there (the exact ones used in a comparison), would really be smooth.

There is a question here that asks almost this exact question but it is from 2018 and the only answer basically suggests updating graphics drivers.

My graphics drivers are up to date, but that doesn’t seem like an actual problem solver because if the graphics had a glitch, I should see the rough text everywhere.

The picture attached shows the comparison between the exact text and font (Arial 12-point, but it’s the same with just about any font, not just Writer and Wordpad rendering one font differently).

Writer is on the left and WordPad on the right. You can clearly see the Writer text is jagged.

Anyone have any ideas how to smooth text in Writer?

Thank you in advance for any assistance. (I’m sure everyone here knows this better than me, but to enlarge the pic you have to right-click it and “View Image”. I’m sure there’s a better way but I don’t see it.)

[EarnestAl]

The words are smaller on the left, having LO at a smaller zoom than Wordpad makes an unfair comparison. I see no difference on mine at same resolution on each. In Windows to see what the printed words will look like for letter spacing, etc. I have to zoom to around 150% , I suspect it is a limitation caused by the number of pixels on my screen.

If you want to turn on font smoothing in Windows just type font smooth into the search next to the Start button and tick the appropriate box

[ThinkingMonkey]

Thank you for the information. Zoom in LO Writer and WordPad both were at 100% for the screenshot here. There is obviously an optical illusion somehow because measuring the letters in this pic in Photoshop with Measure tool shows that the words are exactly the same size. Vertically, where a size difference would be exacerbated most, the top of the “T” in the “Three” of the chapter title to the bottom of the bottom line is 148.5 pixels on both the Writer and WordPad (right) side of the pic. Horizontally, where it does indeed appear there is more spacing between letters, there is only a 9 pixel difference across the entire length of the first line. Font Smooth (vs ClearType which I believe you were talking about) applies only when using Windows’ Magnifier. I don’t mean to sound argumentive and I’m only looking for assistance, but the left (Writer) letters are indeed considerably more jagged.

[LeroyG]

Check Use Anti-Aliasing. For this, choose Tools - Options - LibreOffice - View.

You can see more Help on Graphics output.

Edit your question if you want to add more information; also can comment an answer. Do not use Add Answer to comment.

Check the mark () to the left of the answer that solves your question.

[ThinkingMonkey]

That area of the settings, Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View, seems to have put me on the right path. One would assume Use anti-aliasing would do the trick but that option was already checked, as well as Use OpenGL for all rendering. Use hardware acceleration was grayed out. Turning everything else off, this became available and that seemed to give me the smoothest-looking text, everything unchecked, with only Use hardware acceleration checked. Just slightly better than everything off altogether. Odd but it seems to work.

[LeroyG]

Similar question: Unexpected Small Spacing Between Letters on screen