Question

I’m evaluating the SpreadsheetGear component for Excel file manipulation. However, out of the box the fonts look slightly blurred or hazy when the same spreadsheet is viewed side-by-side with Excel. Is there some anti-aliasing setting I’m missing?

Or is this by design?

Answer 1

For anyone else wondering, I logged with support and it is apparently by design.

The reason for the text not being
clear is the fact that we use
anti-aliased fonts. We have spent
quite a bit of time trying to get non
anti-aliased fonts to work. However,
.NET does not provide reliable font
metrics when anti-aliased fonts are
not used, and we cannot do some of the
layout we need to do without reliable
font metrics. Performance is also
slower when non anti-aliased text is
used.

If Microsoft fixes this (the font
metrics issues) in a future version of
.NET, we may add an option to use non
anti-aliased text.

There are some advantages to
anti-aliased text. As users move to
higher resolution (120+ DPI instead of
96 DPI) the appearance of anti-aliased
text improves significantly. There are
also other advantages, such as
reliable zooming. Try autofitting some
columns in Excel/SpreadsheetGear and
then zoom in and out – notice that the
text no longer fits in Excel but it
still fits in SpreadsheetGear. Moving
workbooks between 96 DPI and 120 DPI
is also more reliable with
anti-aliased text. Printed output also
looks better in many cases.