Adjustable Anti-aliasing samplerate

[RejZoR]

Is there any chance we could see option to adjust anti-aliasing samplerate?

Or at least option to enable very high samplerate along with normal one?

Lines and fonts are often pretty ugly because they aren't filtered enough.

Example:

See the left line? And compare it with right one. Small angles make such ugly stairsteps. Also text looks jagged even though Anti-Aliasing was enabled.

I don't know how high sample rate you use but higher would certanly be better.

[Rick Brewster]

This is definitely something we're looking into for our next major release, look for major improvements here. I totally want to rewrite so much of this stuff. (like said elsewhere, it takes time -- so don't hold your breath please)

Right now we use GDI and GDI+ for most of our rendering. GDI+ in particular is known to be buggy, but most apps stick to the simple stuff that doesn't cause problems ("draw bitmap" and "fill rectangle" type stuff). However, we've come to the point where it feels like we're running in to every bug in GDI+.

For example, just two days ago I found a bug that only happens in 64-bit mode. Draw a rectangle with a brush size of like ... 8. Oops. The corners are not mitered at all so you end up with a poor "rounded" rectangle. This is GDI+'s fault.

grumbles and mutters

I remember reading some quote from a guy working on Office, it was something like: "Find the dependencies ... and eliminate them." Expect us to use GDI+ less and less as time goes on, which will give us more flexibility and power as a result.

[Rick Brewster]

Also, with regard to the text rendering.

We used to utilize GDI+ to do text rendering (w/ the Text Tool), but had many people complain about its quality of rendering, esp. at smaller font sizes. Currently we use GDI, and are now getting a different set of complaints. Darned if we do, darned if we don't, eh?

It's basically rendering the text the same way Windows does for the UI in the rest of the system (windows, dialog boxes, text on a web page, etc.) Expect to see more options in this area as well, even if it's just to choose between "smoothing option A" (GDI) and "smoothing option B" (GDI+).

The big benefit we get currently from using GDI (instead of GDI+) is that it is now possible to use Paint.NET for doing UI mockups. Basically you take a screenshot of a dialog box, then edit the text to be something else for the purpose of a design document or Powerpoint presentation. But we're realizing over time that this does not produce palatable results for many other types of image editing.