Text / font rendering engine (layout) details

Threads come up quite often on this forum (and on the User mailing list and AskLO forum) about the poor rendering of on-screen text. The comparison is generally to MS Word and ClearType however this in itself highlights the sheer scale of the issue.

LO being multi-platform means it must support not only Windows, but also MacOS and GNU/Linux. In order to achieve this there are currently something like five different text rendering engines/methods in use. This results in complex and difficult to maintain code. The developers have long known this is one area in need of attention and there is a desire to replace these rendering engines with one (Harfbuzz). Both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have evidently done just this, resulting in much more consistent text rending and easier maintenance. This is however a large task that will take some time.

The issue has recently been discessed on the Developer mailing list. If you are at all interested in the technical underlying reasons behind this issue I encourage taking the time to have a read.