Font rendering in gedit is smooth, but not smooth in NetBeans

Question

See the attached image. The window in the background is gedit with the fonts rendered smooth. The window on top is NetBeans with not-so-smooth font rendering (not anti-aliased, I think). Both editors use Ubuintu Mono font. Can anyone help me to make NetBeans render the fonts better?

I'm on 12.10.

Solution 1

You should be able to improve the font rendering, but it will never be like the one in Gedit. Usually all java applications using Swing have that weird rendering. If you use Eclipse, for example, the font rendering should be correct.

Font rendering can be changed in /etc/netbeans.conf:

sudo gedit /etc/netbeans.conf

and at the end of netbeans_default_options (between the quotation marks) add this:

-J-Dswing.aatext=true -J-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=<OPTION>

where option can be "on", "gasp" or "lcd". You can get the full list here.

Try all those and see which one gives you best look. Hope it helps.

NOTE:

i don't have Netbeans installed right now to test, but depending on the way you have installed it netbeans.conf can be located somewhere else.

Solution 2

Fixed.

See this and this.

TL;DR: just add -J-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on -J-Dswing.aatext=true to netbeans_default_options in the netbeans.conf file.

(netbeans.conf is at <installdir>/etc/netbeans.conf)

Of course, restart NetBeans.

See the result screenshot below. The Netbeans window on the extreme right is the onc after the above options are applied. Still not as good as gedit, but better than before.

Comments

[NoBugs]

The . and : are still only one pixel. No solution for this?

[Kolyunya]

The on option worked just fine for me. Thank you.