[Ldsoss] AntiAlias Java

[Ben Galbraith]

On Aug 24, 2006, at 8:20 AM, Tom Welch wrote:
> Many java applications if using swing tend to have really ugly  
> UI's.  The fonts look terrible.

>   I wrote some code that can make them look a whole lot better.   
> This code requires jre 1.5.

If you're on JDK5, just set this system property:

swing.aatext=true

and Swing will use anti-aliasing throughout.

If you're not on JDK5, probably best to create your own look-and-feel  
that simply subclasses an existing look and adds anti-aliasing to the  
UI delegates.

>         j.putClientProperty 
> (com.sun.java.swing.SwingUtilities2.AA_TEXT_PROPERTY_KEY,Boolean.TRUE) 
> ;

Using com.sun.* classes is risky. For something as trivial as a  
constant, probably best to define the constant yourself and use it  
that way. With Apple in the fray as a popular JRE implementor, this  
problem is not theoretical, though I suspect this code would still  
work as they in practice do include a lot of Sun's impl. in their own.

Ben