Font Rendering Changes / smudgy bold fonts in TB 52

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Thunderbird
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winedog
Posts: 53
Joined: January 17th, 2005, 2:27 pm

Font Rendering Changes / smudgy bold fonts in TB 52

Post by winedog »

Were there any changes in the font rendering for Thunderbird 52. It seems that there is some shading happening on adjacent pixels and is most obvious when bold fonts are used. It feels like the fonts look a little smudged.

It is most obvious on bolded lower-case 'a' where the center of the 'a' gets filled in.

Image

Maybe it's always been this way and I'm just hallucinating, but as soon as the TB 52 update happened while I was in middle using TB this morning and it restarted the fonts just looked a little more jagged / rough / smudged to me?
impar
Posts: 103
Joined: August 8th, 2007, 1:45 pm

Re: Font Rendering Changes / smudgy bold fonts in TB 52

Post by impar »

Have the same problem since v52.0.1.
Googled for a solution and all I could find was support.mozilla.org links that direct to "Page not found" error.

Any solution?
Lnwdz
Posts: 173
Joined: June 12th, 2012, 7:59 am

Re: Font Rendering Changes / smudgy bold fonts in TB 52

Post by Lnwdz »

At least for my WinXP, it's the same skia problem that affects Firefox 52+ on some systems.

To change font rendering back to cairo:
Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Config Editor
Change gfx.content.azure.backends from
direct2d1.1,skia,cairo to
direct2d1.1,cairo,skia

It probably isn't necessary to change gfx.canvas.azure.backends the same way.
impar
Posts: 103
Joined: August 8th, 2007, 1:45 pm

Re: Font Rendering Changes / smudgy bold fonts in TB 52

Post by impar »

Thanks!

That did it. :)
bugblatter
Posts: 59
Joined: June 21st, 2005, 12:31 am

Re: Font Rendering Changes / smudgy bold fonts in TB 52

Post by bugblatter »

Same for me. TB just updated to 52.1.1 yesterday for me and the fonts became all blurry and faint. Since exactly this happened to me on ff 52 a few months ago (must have transferred over), I knew what to do (exactly what Lnwfdz said above).

From my surface reading of it, Azure (ff/tb 2D graphics engine) defaults to a software backend when hw accel (direct2d) is not available (like in Windows XP it seems) or is disabled. This used to default to cairo (old) but they decided to switch to skia (newer) which is supposed to be better with the caveat that fonts might look different. So we're switching the pref back to the way it was before, with cairo in front of skia. This impacts Windows XP users in particular since newer Windows users (Vista+) would still be using hw accel (unless they turn it off).
EmilFlasche
New Member
Posts: 1
Joined: June 20th, 2018, 12:48 am

Re: Font Rendering Changes / smudgy bold fonts in TB 52

Post by EmilFlasche »

I've tried what Lnwdz suggested. However, the problem persists. I did not have an issues with Thunderbird 52.8.0 until I had upgraded to Macintosh OS Sierra 10.13.5 (17F77) - its exactly as winedog describes- and it gets really tiring for the eyes. Anyone has solved this? Input appreciated.
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