Bring back "DirectWrite Flag"

oldbushie

I agree that the GUI text is a bit blurry for my tastes; I have astigmatism, so I much prefer sharper fonts to artificial smoothness. I have ClearType disabled in Windows 7 and while the content of webpages looks fine, the GUI text (tabs and menu bar) runs together a bit due to the smoothness which makes it hard to read at a glance.

JimFlasch

I do not particularly care for DirectWrite either and agree that you should bring back the DirectWrite flag ASAP - like in the next update, so those of us who prefer to disable DirectWrite can do so.

Ayespy

It's not possible. It's removed from the underlying engine, which Vivaldi does not write or edit.

Ayespy

Cent is a totally different type of project. They are not building their own browser, but merely tweaking Chrome. Plus, they are skipping version numbers so they don't have to install their proprietary patches on as many versions. If Vivaldi were doing as little actual coding as Cent is, they could patch direct write every day and twice on Sunday. Their actual job is a lot bigger than that, however.

JimFlasch

Slimjet still has the DirectWrite flag, too!

Ayespy

@JimFlasch:

Slimjet still has the DirectWrite flag, too!

Which version? Newest Slimjet 64 is still on Chromium 51. And, too, Slimjet is also not building their own browser.

reine

… I would have the same problem. Following what i've been doing for version 1.3.551.30 (Stable channel)

Shortcut
Adding: –disable-remote-fonts (s. picture shortcut.png)
Disable scaling at high dpi value (s. picture compatibility_settings.png). I do not know if that really brings something.
Change font settings in Vivaldi
s. picture font_settings.png
Change zoom for websites in Vivaldi
s. picture zoom_settings.png
Change font & size of the User Interface
a. Make a new file called user.css (s. picture style_1.png)
b. Open the file common.css (for example with notepad). At the Beginninginsert @import url('user.css'); (s. picture style_2.png). Save common.css.
c. Open the file user.css. Insert *{font-family: "8514oem"; font-size:100.9%; -webkit-text-stroke: 0.1px transparent; !important;}.tab-header{font-size:125%; !important;}.addressfield {font-size:115%}.searchfield {font-size:115%}.searchfield {font-size:115%}. Save user.css.
Change the font for websites
a. Install the Stylebot" Extension (look at the Chrome Webstore)
b. Go to the Stylebot Options > Style > Global Stylesheet and insert the following body, p, td, span, a {
font-family: "Palatino", "Arial Unicode MS", "Lucida Grande", "Arial", "Courier New", "Lucida Console", monospace;
}

Note: I've been using the portable Version of Vivaldi. I think the same is valid for the installed version. Hope this helps.

… a few notes what i've been doing to speed up Vivaldi

vivaldi://flags
#enable-experimental-canvas-features activate
#enable-fast-unload activate
#num-raster-threads 4
Shortcut s. picture shortcut.png (i do not know if that really brings something, but i believe in it :lol: )
Adding: /Prefetch:1
Change the proxy settings (s. picture network_settings.png)
vivaldi > nework settings > proxy settings > settings for LAN
Deactivate automatically detect settings

… i fear that the DirectWrite flag will not come back .
Attachments:
,,,,,

Tamer

It's not possible. It's removed from the underlying engine, which Vivaldi does not write or edit.

Cent Browser did it somehow.

Ayespy

@Tamer:

Cent Browser did it somehow.

As I said several posts above: "Cent is a totally different type of project. They are not building their own browser, but merely tweaking Chrome. Plus, they are skipping version numbers so they don't have to install their proprietary patches on as many versions. If Vivaldi were doing as little actual coding as Cent is, they could patch direct write every day and twice on Sunday. Their actual job is a lot bigger than that, however."

NoDWnoVivaldi

The thin almost unreadable fonts are the exact reason why I left chrome for firefox. This is also a deal breaker for me, it's not some fancy option, it is essential as I have to squint my eyes or zoom in 200% to be able te read. I don't want to destroy my eyesight any furthuer so I'm going back to firefox.

I was a great experience tho, i'll check in a few month if you guys had time to make a fix.

Mikka

@Gwen-Dragon:

The Vivaldi team currently has no power (time, humanpower) to add it.

As elaborated earlier, they don't have to. It's enough if they disable the font smoothing of the directWrite approach.

There was a time when I was happy whenever a Vivaldi update was available, now I keep pushing them back as I have to manually change the common.css every time to get at least a half way readable font type and size activated. This really sucks and with every update, you get reminded that apparently nobody wants to take a look at this issue. Maybe all Vivaldi devs have 4k screens, who knows.

Mikka

@Gwen-Dragon:

If the issue with font rendering was easy and quickly to fix, they would have already done.

And you know that they already investigated this issue because?

@Gwen-Dragon:

You can fix your problem.

No, I can't, that's why this thread exists.

Ayespy

Gwen-Dragon knows they already investigated it because, like me, she is an internal tester who communicates with the developers daily. One specific subject of discussion has been the DirectWrite problem.

Mikka

Bu that really is an important piece of information. To an outsider, the results of nobody caring (which is basically what google does with most of the tickets) and people still trying to figure out a solution are the same. I can only encourage Vivaldi to let people know if their problems are being addressed, I can assure you that this makes waiting for a solution way more bearable.

Ayespy

Have you tried enabling LCD anti-aliasing in vivaldi://flags? Some users have reported this fixed their problem after Chrome killed the DirectWrite flag.

Mikka

Yes, but it makes no visible difference on my setup.

Ayespy

Drag.

Case

In regard to font rendering and DirectWrite, it might be worth noting that after three years, there's finally been a new MacType release yesterday that also introduces the possibility to tweak DirectWrite behaviour.

https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype/releases

In case you don't know, MacType is (somewhat contrary to the name of the project) an application that basically replaces ClearType with FreeType, font rendering engine that's mostly used in Linux (and which in my opinion is absolutely superior to ClearType/DirectWrite and is also much more tweakable). It doesn't offer the same amount of customizability when it comes to DirectWrite as it offers for general Windows font rendering, not by a long shot, but you can still tweak it a bit.

If you want to use the DirectWrite support, you have to specifically add a "DirectWrite=1" switch to your active MacType profile, and you also need to add another .ini file called UserParams.ini into MacType's directory. You can get a default UserParams.ini file here:

https://github.com/silight-jp/MacType-Patch/tree/master/ini/win8.1 or later

There's a bunch of parameters you can tweak in the UserParams.ini file, including the possibility to force DirectWrite to use GDI font rendering if you wish so.

This, for example, is the Vivaldi default:

http://foto.mfiala.cz/photos/i-9cTjKTd/0/O/i-9cTjKTd.png

And this is with "GDI Classic" font rendering and grid fit enabled:

http://foto.mfiala.cz/photos/i-bk86tbD/0/O/i-bk86tbD.png

You may however note that there are some kerning issues when you use the GDI rendering with grid fit. Disabling grid fit fixes that, but then you're bound to run into some nasty hinting artifacts here and there. Pick your poison.

Personally, I kinda grew accustomed to DirectWrite nowadays when I can't have the full MacType/FreeType experience, as it makes the glyphs look more natural than the old rendering. So I only enabled grid fit and set the DirectWrite rendering to "Natural symmetric downsampled", as it seems to render the glyphs the best for my tastes. However, I REALLY dislike the way Blink browsers always make the glyphs oversharpened and thin by applying some kind of internal postprocessing filter, so I always apply a tiny bit of shadow via user CSS to the glyphs to up the contrast and readability and make them look smoother. For example, here's the above screenshot with my tweaks applied:

http://foto.mfiala.cz/photos/i-CfqkBbh/0/O/i-CfqkBbh.png

And here's Wikipedia (default and my tweaks):

http://foto.mfiala.cz/photos/i-hP8cJ5t/0/O/i-hP8cJ5t.png
http://foto.mfiala.cz/photos/i-Cph9TPH/0/O/i-Cph9TPH.png

For anyone interested, this is the custom CSS I apply to everything globally:

HTML, body, div, dl, dt, dd, ul, ol, li, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, pre, code, form, fieldset, legend, input, button, textarea, p, blockquote, th, td, span {
	-webkit-text-stroke: 0.0px !important;
	text-shadow: 0.15px 0.15px 0.15px rgba(50,50,50, 0.13), 0.15px -0.15px 0.15px rgba(50,50,50, 0.13), -0.15px 0.15px 0.15px rgba(50,50,50, 0.13), -0.15px -0.15px 0.15px rgba(50,50,50, 0.13) !important;
}

Which you can of course tweak to your specific taste by changing the text-shadow parameters. Applying shadow to all text is not the perfect solution, but it's the only way I'm able to actually look at the text rendered by Blink browsers for prolonged periods of time.

adem

As a partial solution I would suggest Font Rendering Enhancer extension. Here you can see the comparison. It has an option to adjust font width.

Interesting note:

Font Rendering Enhancer comes from Opera Font Rendering by thunder13. Darker and clearer text on almost every page (http and https). Modified and ported Mac OSX Font Rendering by proxxy (from Opera on Presto engine).

mossman

I don't know… all of your so-called improvements with GDI and other tweaks look hideous compared to the default images on my screen!

And they all look worse than Vivaldi with my correctly-calibrated ClearType settings...

I have an older Samsung LCD HD TV used as a monitor and the unusual sub-pixel order (RBG instead of RGB if I recall correctly) meant that the default ClearType settings were horrendous and I needed to spend time tuning it before I could stand to read text on this screen.

It looks perfect now, also in Vivaldi; but I notice if I take a screenshot and blow it up you can clearly see bars of colour all over the place. That would suggest that all your screenshots look bad for me because they're not correct for my monitor.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is - set up ClearType properly for your own system and everything should be fine.