Awful font rendering in 1.1

[dmxt]

Operating System: Windows 8 Pro x64
Font Rendering Engine: MacType

Brackets 1.0 with MacType font rendering looks beautiful. When I updated to Brackets 1.1, the new version managed to block MacType custom font rendering resulting in a horrible font rendering. Perhaps Brackets 1.1 decides to force GPU to render fonts (awful!) or forces @font-face for some reason?

See images for example:

Brackets 1.0

Brackets 1.1

It's this bad that I have to revert the update back to 1.0 and will stay on 1.0 forever until it's solved!

[ghost]

I tink It has to do with brackets-shell. Google has changed font rendering in chrome some time ago. Brackets-shell uses Chrome embedded framework, so that's the problem I think.

[ralder]

You need to run Brackets.exe with flag --disable-direct-write (you may add it in field target in properties of shortcut Brackets)

[dmxt]

The flag --disable-direct-write solved the problem. Hopefully it will be configurable through the config.

Thanks.

[prksingh]

Thanks @ralder for the solution. Closing as a duplicate of #10698

[dmxt]

Please reopen this issue. The flagging solution is quick hack fix at best, because it doesn't work well in other situation such as:

• You only can add flag to shortcut file.
• I cannot start Brackets with flag through right-click context menu, because it starts with original .exe without flag.
• FileZilla doesn't work properly with flag argument when I try to edit more than one file through FileZilla, it just doesn't open second file.

I'm rolling back to Brackets 1.0 because of this. I hope that it will be possible to add directwrite option to the config.

[dmxt]

@prksingh Reopen the issue, please.

[prksingh]

@dmxt I had closed this issue because it appeared to be a duplicate of issue #10698

Are you saying that this issue is different from 10698? Otherwise we can continue to track it there

[dmxt]

@prksingh My issue is older than his, it doesn't make sense to close an original issue if someone else made a duplicate issue? I'm not complaining, it just doesn't make sense... but if you think it's right thing to do, then that's fine, I have nothing against it.

[prksingh]

I saw that your issue was older but the 10698 had more discussion and information on it.

[dmxt]

@prksingh The issue you chose to keep open is long closed by @ralder. I'm truly offended on how you handled this. The issue remains unsolved.

---

To keep in topic: The solution to this issue is to add directwrite option to the config, instead of using flag parameters because it's not well supported with other programs.

[prksingh]

Sorry for any offence. The other issue is still open (though unresolved), I have added a 'needs review' tag so the team can look at it and add a priority to the issue

[nethip]

@dmxt While we figure out how to solve this issue, did you try passing the parameter --disable-direct-write to Brackets shortcut. In order to do that, you could add the parameters to the Target edit box, present in the shortcut's Properties dialog. So the Target edit box would look something like

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Brackets\Brackets.exe" --disable-direct-write

Can you try this and let me know if this works fine?

[dmxt]

@nethip
Yes, as mentioned above, the parameter --disable-direct-write solves the very issue. However, passing the parameter isn't an option for me because it causes miscellaneous problems with third party program interaction, for an example:

• FileZilla doesn't open multiply files properly with the argument, instead of opening as tab, it opens as new window which disrupts my work flow.
• Opening the file via context menu doesn't open with the argument, instead it opens the default .exe file without arguments.

I would list more problems, but I immediately downgraded to Brackets 1.0 so I'm not on Brackets >1.1 long enough to find other problems.

As mentioned above, I suggested making direct-write configurable through the config file and we can declare the entire issue solved, unless you have the better idea which is openly welcomed.

Thanks.

[nethip]

@dmxt The problem in making Brackets configurable for this workflow is the fact that, this needs to be handled at the brackets-shell (The thin wrapper which encloses the editor) side of things and we do not have any infrastructure as of now to to make brackets-shell configurable. As of now we just have Brackets side of things configurable, through .brackets.json but not brackets-shell.

In 1.3, we have added command line support to Brackets, meaning Brackets can be open from command line by optionally passing file names as arguments. In order to do this, we have created a command script present inside <INSTALLDIR>/command folder. This is essentially the script.

start Brackets.exe $*

You could tweak this to pass --disable-direct-write along with the other parameters. That way whenever Brackets is invoked from command line using brackets <filename/folder name>, --disable-direct-write is automagically passed to Brackets.

Also about the "Open With Brackets" option(which is now added in 1.3), could you tweak this registry entry.

HKCR\*\Shell\Brackets\Command to have this additional option.

Note: Be sure to handle this carefully as this involves tweaking the registry.

You mentioned about other issues with 1.2/1.3. Could you describe what sorts of problems you are running into using 1.2/1.3?.