Phpstorm Editor fonts on linux systems

31
votes

So tired to search solution.. I use PHPStorm IDE for my php projects and one trouble just makes me crazy. Editor fonts (editor, don't care about interface) looks horrible. I've tried on different distributions and different DE but result is always the same :( There are screenshots to compare Kate and PHPStorm fonts. I know that PHPStorm is an JAVA application and it uses different font hitting engine, but.. Eclipse is an JAVA app too, but has pretty nice fonts. PHPStorm fonts on both Windows and OSX looks like other system fonts. Smooth and readable. PHPStorm

Kate

Is there way to fix this font issue before my eyes will explode..? Thanks.

9
phpstorm
Hmm. Second screenshot after upload became smoother than original for some reasons. But I think my problem is clear for people who have the same trouble. - Yaroslav Rogoza
I noticed that NetBeans 7 on linux has the same problem with fonts rendering :( - Yaroslav Rogoza

9 Answers

20
votes

Following the PhpStorm issue, here is what I added to phpstorm64.vmoptions (that I have installed in /usr/local/bin/PhpStorm/bin/):

-Dswing.aatext=true
-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=gasp
-Dsun.java2d.xrender=true

I also did the trick of opening the font in FontForge:

  • Ctrl+A (select all chars)
  • Hints -> Clear Hints
  • Hints -> Clear Instructions
  • File -> Generate Font

I put it in ~/fonts/

I am running Ubuntu 12.10 and after all that, everything looks quite great (I did it for Ubuntu Mono).

The only problem I noticed is that -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=gasp leads to great editor font rendering, but poor rendering for menus and other stuffs. Whereas -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd gives awesome font rendering for menus, but less good font rendering in the editor. So try both and pick the one you prefer.

Update: on Ubuntu 13.10, I have no problem anymore.

4
votes

This is Linux specific issue, you can find a lot of information on this problem here. Check the comments for various suggestions and workarounds.

Here is what you can get with just a different font:

IDEA on Linux

4
votes

You can install infinality patches and patch OpenJDK to make it use freetype for fonts rendering.

Here are links about installing infinality and patched OpenJDK for Ubuntu-based distributions:

http://www.webupd8.org/2013/06/better-font-rendering-in-linux-with.html
http://www.webupd8.org/2013/06/install-openjdk-patched-with-font-fixes.html

And here is my screenshot of PHPStorm running on Fedora 20 with infinality and patched OpenJDK: enter image description here

2
votes

Try adding -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd to bin/phpstorm.vmoptions

0
votes

Try Settings -> Editor -> Appearance -> Use anti-aliased font

0
votes

The best solution I've found is to use FontForge. FontForge it's a linux application which allows you to edit some font preferences. Just open ttf font within app. Press ctrl+a to select all chars. Then choose from menu Hints -> Clear Hints. Then Hints -> Clear Instructions. And last File -> Generate Fonts. Just save the new font as new or replace existing and try to use this font with PhpStorm. Looks not ideal but much better than before.

0
votes

Also I've noticed that fonts on a dark background looks pretty good in Linux Dark background

0
votes

Comparing NetBeans and PhpStorm side by side on my Debian-Squeeze box and I found NetBeans looked much better even when the same font and font-size was selected. The difference was that PhpStorm had bolded most of the code. After going through the editor configuration and getting rid of all the bolding the editor looks much better now.

0
votes

Monospaced with anti-aliasing looks good to me for WebStorm.