CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javamacosintellij-ideafonts
Null
Null

Reputation: 414

Why is Intellij Idea's font rendering worse with JDK 1.8 vs 1.6

I have Intellij Idea 14 Ultimate on Mac OS X. With the default 1.6 JDK packaged with it, the fonts look great. However, upon updating the Info.plist to use the 1.8 JDK installed on my machine, the fonts look horrible. See screenshots for details.

Intellij Idea 14 font rendering with JDK 1.6 -

Intellij Idea 14 font rendering with JDK 1.6

Intellij Idea 14 font rendering with JDK 1.8 -

Intellij Idea 14 font rendering with JDK 1.8

Upvotes: 4

Views: 961

Answers (1)

yole
yole

Reputation: 97133

The Java 6 implementation was provided by Apple and used Quartz for font rendering and UI display. The Quartz-based implementation was never open-sourced, so newer versions of Java on Mac supplied by Oracle use a different rendering infrastructure based on OpenGL with a custom font renderer. That's why the rendering is different, and is unlikely to ever become the same.

Quartz also applies a level of gamma correction to the UI, which also explains why your first screenshot is brighter than your second one.

(Note that I don't see anything on your second screenshot which could be called "horrible".)

Upvotes: 5

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