Comments on: Hello DirectWrite. We’ve been waiting.

By: Helen Thomas

Helen Thomas — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 03:11:58 +0000

I’m actually having trouble with old fashioned, simple rasterization. Seems WPF doesn’t allow the use of aliased texts, which annoys certain users.

By: nerdplusart.com | Jing Pro Launches (and it’s definitely worth the $14.95 they’re asking for it)

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:23:49 +0000

[...] At least, I’m pretty sure that it is. I got an instant WPF vibe from it (maybe the text?) and dug up this post which would seem to confirm my [...]

By: Grant Hinkson

Grant Hinkson — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:31:22 +0000

I have to agree with you 100% here. This has been, and continues to be, one of my main rendering complaints. I can achieve good results if I convert text to paths (in Fireworks or Blend) but that is only practical for logos and illustrations, not for headline or body text.

By: nerdplusart.com | Free Typefaces for Your WPF of Silverlight Project

nerdplusart.com | Free Typefaces for Your WPF of Silverlight Project — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:22:37 +0000

[...] spite of my humbug perspective on text rendering from the other day, I’m a huge advocate for using type creatively in your project and WPF and [...]

By: mike duggan

mike duggan — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:39:30 +0000

hi, can mention which font is used in the comparison above of Photoshop v WPF?

By: Mike Strobel

Mike Strobel — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:34:57 +0000

From what I understand, the DirectWrite text engine is bringing a lot of the features of the WPF text engine to unmanaged code. WPF already has Y-direction antialiasing and subpixel positioning, and I haven’t heard anything to suggest that DirectWrite will be bringing anything new to WPF.

I’m actually a bit surprised to hear you complain about WPF’s text rendering. In my experience, it has superior text rendering to any other platform. I’m developing a game in WPF, and several people have given me positive feedback about the text rendering. There are a couple edge cases in which WPF falls back to grayscale antialiasing, but for the most part I find the glyphs to be exceptionally clear and crisp. Personally, I can’t stand Photoshop’s text engine. I find the antialiasing options to very limited, and I keep expecting it to get better with each release, but it seems to go unchanged :-/.

However, I will join with you in requesting more detailed control over text rendering options. I’d also like to see a mechanism for altering the character spacing (one very nice Photoshop feature that I always miss).

By: thomas

thomas — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:19:57 +0000

The abysmal display of fonts in Silverlight is the primary reason I don’t use it. I have about 5 major projects I’d like to use Silverlight for but the fonts in Silverlight are actually painful to read so the projects will have to wait until Silverlight font presentation improves. This has been a major, major frustration for me.