blurry font as document is longer than one page and scroll bars appear

[gabriele]

I have recently installed GNOME Ubuntu 14.04 and gEdit application seems to have a strange behavior whenever the document is longer than a page and vertical scroll bars appear on the screen (I just checked the same problem with long lines that enable horizontal scroll bars).

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

If this bug is is GTK, then it's in version 3, the one gedit uses since 2011.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Cavia Porcellus (caviaporcellus)]

Note that this does not just affect Gedit, but Synpatic as well.

Is this actually a GTK problem, not a font config issue?

See the attempt at a workaround here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gedit/+bug/1290697

[PJSingh5000 (pjsingh5000)]

I've marked Bug #1311734 as a duplicate of this bug. Here is the information I had supplied with that bug (since it will not be searchable after being marked a duplicate). Also, please not that I have opened an upstream bug against gedit for this issue: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=729126

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Gedit switches to gray-scale font anti-aliasing when the text displayed does not fit within the window.

To reproduce the bug:

(1) Select the following font settings:
 Default font: Liberation Sans, 10
 Document font: Liberation Sans, 10
 Monospace font: Liberation Mono, 9
 Window title font: Liberation Sans Bold, 10
 Antialiasing: RGBA
 Hinting: Medium
 Text scaling factor: 1.00

(2) Open gedit. (Optionally, make the window a little smaller so you don't have to type so much in the next step).

(3) Type some text and notice that the font selections you made are being used. (Take a screen-shot for reference).

(4) Continue typing more text, until the text no longer fits in the gedit window's text area. The vertical overlay scroll bar will appear at the right window edge (if you have text wrap enabled).

(5) Now that the text you typed does not fit within the gedit window, notice that the text is no longer as smooth as before. (Take a screen-shot for reference).

(6) Open and zoom into the screen shot from step 3, and then open and zoom into the screen shot from step 5. Notice that the colored font hinting (or anti-aliased font edges) that appearED in the screen-shot from step 3 are no longer present in the screen-shot from step 5. The fonts in the screen-shot from step 5 have gray antialiasing / hinting.

I have attached a screen-shots depicting this situation. The left side of the screen shot shows gedit with good font antialiasing / hinting (from step 3). The left side of the screen shot shows gedit with bad font antialiasing / hinting (from step 5). I have also zoomed into the letter "A" in each respective scenario, and pasted that into the image to show how the font hinting / anti-aliasing changes when text does not fit into the gedit window.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: gedit 3.10.4-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-24.46-generic 3.13.9
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CasperVersion: 1.340
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Wed Apr 23 14:58:48 2014
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gedit
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140417)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gedit
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[PJSingh5000 (pjsingh5000)]

Looks like the following gtk upstream bug ("antialiasing gone wrong when the textview is scrollable") is the correct bug to track this issue, since (as other's have noted) it impacts many applicaitons:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=715008

[PJSingh5000 (pjsingh5000)]

A work-around is to add the following to the launcher:
    env GTK_DEBUG=no-pixel-cache

For gedit...
$ sudo sed -i "s|Exec=gedit %U|# Exec=gedit %U\nExec=env GTK_DEBUG=no-pixel-cache gedit %U|g" /usr/share/applications/gedit.desktop

[Adam Novak (interfect)]

I can confirm that the workaround works! You can add the environment variable to the launcher with the "alacarte" menu editor, if you want a GUI for it.

I can now read my gedit again. Thanks!

[PJSingh5000 (pjsingh5000)]

FYI...

If you want to test, this has been fixed in GTK+ 3.13.7 (unstable release).
The fix will be available for the GTK+ 3.14 stable version in September, per Sébastien Wilmet (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=715008#c27).

[Christophe (touil1976)]

As of today, the bug is still present in ubuntu 14.04. When will the fix be available, now that it works with gtk+3.14 ? Will it be adapted to the gtk version that is used by 14.04 ?

[Frederic Defoy (fdefoy)]

Thank you so much for the workaround! This was driving me nuts! Of course its going to take FOREVER for this to get fixed in the reps... #1 problem with linux.

[Mohammad Anwar Shah (mohammadanwarshah)]

I can confirm that this bug also affect the bluefish-editor. I am on Ubuntu 14.04 and I am attaching two screenshots before and after bluefish get blurred! Even after I used the legacy scrollbar.

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

Fixed since 3.13.7

[Mohammad Anwar Shah (mohammadanwarshah)]

@fitojb, How do I get this Fix in Ubuntu 14.04?

[Jeff (jdorenbush)]

@mohammadanwarshah , What are the values of "rgba-order" and "antialiasing" in your xsettings?

Run this command in a terminal to check values:
gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings

[Mohammad Anwar Shah (mohammadanwarshah)]

The value of "rgba-order" is "rgb" and "antialiasing" is "rgba"

This is the full output

org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings disabled-gtk-modules @as []
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings priority 0
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings hinting 'slight'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides @a{sv} {}
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings rgba-order 'rgb'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings antialiasing 'rgba'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings active true
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings enabled-gtk-modules @as []

[Jeff (jdorenbush)]

Try this workaround: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gedit/+bug/1290697/comments/8

Let me know if that helps.

[Mohammad Anwar Shah (mohammadanwarshah)]

After so many years, this bug still pops up in different gtk applications including gnome-tweaks etc. They've never fixed the issue really. Very sad

[Mantas Mikulėnas (grawity)]

Well, even if it's the same underlying issue, it occurs in a completely different component. As I recall, the bug in GEdit was caused by gtksourceview – fairly sure gnome-tweaks doesn't use that.

[Mohammad Anwar Shah (mohammadanwarshah)]

Then, maybe the underlying problem is somewhere else.

[Cubic PPA (cubic-wizard)]

Now that you mention it, I just noticed it in Gnome Tweaks...

1. Click on "Windows" in left pane of the Gnome Tweaks window.
2. Note that a scroll bar is present, because the content doesn't fit in the the main (details) portion of the window.
3. Notice that the fonts are blurry in the main (details) portion of the window.

4. Click on and slowly drag down the bottom edge of the Gnome Tweaks window, so the window gets taller, and the full content appears.
5. Note that the scroll bar disappears when the content fits in the the resized window.
6. Notice that the fonts are NO LONGER blurry in the main (details) portion of the window.

By simply by changing the window size, you can make the font change from blurry to sharp!

[Mohammad Anwar Shah (mohammadanwarshah)]

Yeah, I knew it. But this is not expected behavior right? And not only in gnome-tweaks, this happens in many other gtk applications. For example, in synaptic's package description section.