Tag Archives: GDI

Text rendering methods comparison or GDI vs. GDI+ revised

In this post, hopefully the last on this subject1, I'm going to compare the different text rending methods available for Windows .NET application for standard resolution devices2.
 
I decided to revise my original findings (see: The wonders of text rendering and GDI) and do a comprehensive comparison for three reasons:

  1. In response to my earlier post (see: GDI text rendering to image ) Kris commented he uses GraphicsPath for text rendering to image to achieve better visual quality than standard GDI+ text rendering.
  2. My latest "revelation" (see: Blurry/Fuzzy GDI+ Text Rendering using anti-alias and floating-point Y coördinates ) on improving GDI+ text rendering visual quality.
  3. GDI+ typographic StringFormat can offer good text measurement for custom text layout.

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Blurry/Fuzzy GDI+ Text Rendering using AntiAlias and floating-point Y coordinates

That's a long title that perfectly captures another issue I have found with GDI+ text rendering.
 
While checking Kris's claim on text rendering using GraphicsPath1 I have noticed that GDI+ text rendering using TextRenderingHint.AntiAlias looks much better (less fuzzy) in simple tests than the result of using HTML Renderer to generate transparent image (using AntiAlias hint). It's strange as HTML Renderer uses the same GDI+ text rendering method.

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The wonders of text rendering and GDI

My research into text rendering in .NET/Windows started with HTML Renderer, I have noticed text issues in the rendered HTML: fonts were pixelated, letter were too close, words were either too close or too far apart (Figure 1). Although minor issues they were bugging me, also I was hoping it will lead to some performance improvements as from my last optimization session text draw/measure were the most time consuming operations.
The resulted improvement exceeded my wildest expectations and worth a post on.
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