[cbolton]

I think the size difference was just me being careless with zoom levels in different apps. I thought it was enough to make the point, since you can compare the space sizes to the character sizes. I put another comparison here: https://imgur.com/a/aZRx6fs , this time with same font size and zoom level.

Anyway I agree that looking exactly the same as Latex is not particularly desirable, but it helps for convincing Latex users to switch.

(The screenshots were made on Linux, with scaling but not fractional I think... But I can't check right now)

[seec]

OK that must have been the screenshot software and zoom producing the blurriness.

In this new screenshot the rendering is perfect and one can't really tell any difference.

As for Latex I think it's a strong desire to belong to a special club that makes people use it and try to stick to the very specific look. It does render math equation nicely, but the rest isn't anything special, especially compared to modern font/techniques.