Notepad3: Thinning a bit Direct2D rendering

[tormento]

I really love to use your Notepad3 as much as I love using font with ligatures.

The only way to use them is thru Direct2D rendering.

I have found that the font gets "bolder" and it's a bit annoying.

Can you tune parameters a bit, if possible, to have the same aspect of GDI rendering?

[tormento]

Here are the examples.

GDI

Direct2D

As you can see, it's not a problem of visual impact but formatting too.

P.S: Font is Cascadia Code PL

[RaiKoHoff]

As the naming says, this are 2 different rendering technologies. So the display will be rough similar but not the same. For the DWrite (Direct2D) technology, you may try to finetune the rendering by selecting another fontweight and fractional pointsize naually (Customize Schemes...):

Possible Font Weights are (if the selected font family supports this):

- thin       (100)
- extralight (200)
- light      (300)
- normal     (400)
- medium     (500)
- semibold   (600)
- bold       (700)
- extrabold  (800)
- heavy      (900)

The fractional Point-Sizes may not have a corresponding visual effect for each granularity.
(Granularity may be 0.3 or 0.5 steps - you have to experiment a bit).
Using the font selection dialog will change this manual settings back to chosen values (fractional point sizes are not possible in the dialog).
Feel free to find the sweet spot for your preferred font family.

[tormento]

@RaiKoHoff unfortunately the font has the 4 major attributes, not light.

I have googled around and two interesting links arose:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8612266/why-cant-directx-directwrite-direct2d-text-rendering-be-as-sharp-as-gdi towards the end you can read about _pRenderTarget->SetTextAntialiasMode(D2D1_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_MODE_CLEARTYPE)_

and the related

https://docs.microsoft.com/it-it/windows/win32/api/d2d1/ne-d2d1-d2d1_text_antialias_mode?redirectedfrom=MSDN

P.S: Would it be possible to add Variable Font support?

[tormento]

Ok, I have tried variable font TTF FiraCodeGX.ttf from official repository on GitHub and at least I can see the "major families" even thought it would be nice to be possible to set the width and the height. It gives better results too on Direct2D display mode.

[RaiKoHoff]

For the TextAntialiasMode(D2D1_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_MODE_CLEARTYPE) you can add the attribute
; smoothing:cleartype (possible values for smoothing are: none, default, standard, cleartype)

Font width and height can not be specified, just the weight (related to font-style) and fractional point-size (which is in fact the font's height).
The width would correspond to the DWrite stretch factor (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/dwrite/ne-dwrite-dwrite_font_stretch), but this seems not accessible through Scintilla's Font Setting API (https://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaDoc.html#SCI_STYLESETFONT)

Further Reading:
https://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaDoc.html#SCI_SETFONTQUALITY
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/directwrite/introducing-directwrite

[tormento]

@RaiKoHoff what about showing the SCI_SETFONTQUALITY(int fontQuality) into the Tecnology settings in Notepad3? Perhaps one of these method could provide better results.

Obviously asking Scintilla authors to implement a new feature, now that variable fonts are getting common, would be the best thing.

[RaiKoHoff]

@tormento the SC_SETFONTQUALITY is exposed by the attribute ;smoothing:

• smoothing:none->SC_EFF_QUALITY_NON_ANTIALIASED->D2D1_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_MODE_ALIASED
• smoothing:default ->SC_EFF_QUALITY_DEFAULT->D2D1_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_MODE_DEFAULT
• smoothing:standard->SC_EFF_QUALITY_ANTIALIASED->D2D1_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_MODE_GRAYSCALE
• smoothing:cleartype->SC_EFF_QUALITY_LCD_OPTIMIZED->D2D1_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_MODE_CLEARTYPE

Ed: we should discuss:
if SC_EFF_QUALITY_LCD_OPTIMIZED == D2D1_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_MODE_CLEARTYPE
(; smoothing:cleartype) instead of D2D1_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_MODE_DEFAULT for DWrite technology should be the default settings (since LED screens are common use?).
But I would like to base the decision on some more visual impression feedbacks.

[tormento]

@RaiKoHoff could you please tell me where to find that setting?

I looked into Notepad3.ini but can't find it. Have I to add manually?

[RaiKoHoff]

Yes:

[RaiKoHoff]

I see no options to configure Microsoft's Rendering Technology - seemms, we can't have a closer matching font display between GDI and DirectWrite.

[hpwamr]

Hello @tormento ,
As far as I'm concerned, I think you (requester) can close this issue...