Blurry Text, the answer is not new glasses

I happen to be a geek (you may have noticed from this blog!) and it happens to be time for me to get new glasses.  This weekend I was out shopping for them (my wife is very happy).  The lady at the eye glass place was very helpful and got me setup with a appointment to have my eyes checked.   Its been over two years since my last exam and they need a current prescription.  

I know that my eyes have changed a little bit over the last two years, but I am not looking forward to a prescription change (headaches). 

I would like to blame Revit and my days spent in front a computer, but sadly cannot.  For one, I am near-sighted so I don't need my glasses for looking at the computer screen, but two, Revit 2010 isn't the cause of the blurriness that I might be seeing, even if it does look a little blurry.  

You may have noticed that the in 2010, the text on the ribbon or type selector is not as sharp as it use to be. 

 

Revit 2009

Revit 2010

It is pretty bothersome.  Unfortunately, the core issue is inside Windows and we have to wait for a fix from Microsoft before we can completely address the issue within Revit.  The good news is that Microsoft has fixed it; the bad news is that it won’t be released to the world until later this year. 

One of our developers summed it up the best.  In the past, Windows has always fudged character outlines to fit on a pixel grid and look sharper at small point sizes.  But when Microsoft introduced WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), their new graphics library, they decided to stop fudging things and draw fonts as closely as possible to the way the font designer intended.  This improves high-res, animated graphics -- but has bad results for small UI text.  Microsoft realized their mistake and the next version of WPF will allow applications to choose which behavior they prefer.

If you’re curious, there’s some technical information here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/text/archive/2009/06/24/new-wpf-4-0-features.aspx  

Some applications don't have this problem because it they don't draw its ribbon UI using the WPF library.  Unfortunately we need WPF to implement other ribbon features, so removing it wasn’t an option for us.

Hopefully, this will help explain that blurriness you may be seeing in Revit and know that you don't have to run off to the eye doctor. :) 

Comments

[iyyy69]

Thanks for the explanation. I have pretty poor eyesight, but I haven't really noticed the blurriness that I've heard many users report. I'd be curious if your screen shots show the full extent of the problem other users have reported, or that's "it".

One thing that helps to make Revit 2010 more readable is the "Light" display theme. The Light theme should be the default in my opinion.

I don't know if it's related, but one issue that is a big deal to me is resolution independence. I bump up my DPI to 125% or more... Revit 2010's looked pretty good, but some apps that get into the "fixed" size pixels for UI elements create havoc. That would be very, very bad.

[krzystoff]

HARLAN: I know AutoCAD has always worked far better without ClearType, WPF is supposed to add other options. looks like the final release isn't due until April this year, but thought I'd give the RC a go for now.
do you know if it's the .NET_4.0 or the VisualStudio_2010 updates we need for that feature??

LYYY69: agreed, I keep the DPI at 125% too--have done so for years, it seems to work more effectively with most software than using larger text (ie. sharper and doesn't clip the text off at the right or bottom edge of windows).

however some software just doesn't work well at all with this setting, in which case I just ditch it and try something else.

a similar problem is with rescaled webpages, which causes similar problems, such as SUBMIT buttons disappearing--more often than not they are ASP websites, not html, not sure if that's a microsoft glitch, but they should really work on it for greater accessibility--most of the adult internet using world has imperfect eyesight, after all, and some just don't want to make their eyesight any worse.