[feverzsj]

Chrome's font rendering issue on Windows has been known for more than a decade. Turns out all you need to do is reading proper gamma/contrast values from register.

But they didn't fix it in Skia, so most Skia based projects still have shitty font rendering on Windows.

Here is the meta issue tracker:

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40037626

[martinsnow]

If i understand correctly, chrome is using windows own font rendering capabilities which should be the preferred method?

[ygra]

Only for shaping and measuring, if I recall correctly. Rendering is still done by Skia and not DirectWrite.

[martinsnow]

Yes you're correct. My memory is a bit fuzzy but it the fact is in the article

> While Skia uses DirectWrite on Windows for certain functionality such as font lookup, the final text rasterization is actually handled directly by Skia. And one major factor in the "washed out" feedback from users is the internal contrast and gamma settings for text rendering.

> Two main differences in text contrast and gamma values were uncovered between Edge's Chromium-based engine and its prior engine. First, Skia does not pick up text contrast and gamma values from the Windows ClearType Tuner. Secondly, it uses different default values for text contrast and gamma than those used by Edge's DirectWrite-based text stack.

I was debugging blurry text in windows at a previous job where we used electron to develop a softphone application and could not understand why the lighter text was harder to read on windows. That would settle the debate.

I hope they will come up with better integration with windows so these differences will disappear.