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The app we use for development (CodeWright 7) is quite old and has Cleartype turned off by default. A newer version has the option to turn on font smoothing, but I'm stuck with this version and upgrading is not an option for me.

Is there a way to force the app to use Cleartype?

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I thought Cleartype is a system-wide property, not per-application. Does CodeWright 7 actively turn it off for the system? – harrymc Sep 17 '09 at 15:18
1  
It's not system-wide. The best example is Safari; you can choose between Windows default and Apple specific font aliasing. – alex Sep 17 '09 at 15:22
Is this on XP or Vista? – Schnapple Sep 17 '09 at 16:03
XP, but I'm sure it would have the same behavior in Vista or 7 as well. – alex Sep 17 '09 at 16:18

4 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I used to use Brief way back when, and when my project team decided to use CodeWright (which can emulate Brief) I was looking forward to it. But I had a really serious problem with CodeWright: all fonts looked ugly in it.

Google newgroups to the rescue. I created a new registry DWORD value (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\CodeWright\Customize\FontQuality) and set it to 0.

Now fonts in CodeWright look beautiful (at least in Windows XP using ClearType).

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I looked into that as well, but I don't have administrator rights on my work PC. Do you know of a way to do it as a limited user? – alex Sep 17 '09 at 16:07
@alex, you should ask "how can I get admin right ?" :) – Revolter Sep 17 '09 at 16:16
@Revolver out of the question, unfortunately. – alex Sep 17 '09 at 16:18
@farnhamtech +1 for liking CodeWright (it's a nice program, very powerful) and for offering a good suggestion. – alex Sep 17 '09 at 16:19
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You do not need special permissions to write to HKEY_CURRENT_USER. (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE does need admin rights.) If regedit is disabled, that means you only have to find another way to edit the registry. – Kevin Panko Sep 17 '09 at 16:39
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You don't have many chances here, the only trick i can think about right now, is that you locate the font file used in CodeWright 7 , get his name, and give it to a more readable font.

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I can use any font I want, but most of them look terrible without Cleartype. – alex Sep 17 '09 at 16:02
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CodeWright 7 almost certainly uses GDI as its rendering mechanism. This doesn't support some newer ClearType features and text may look different to you from other applications.

There is no way to change this, that I am aware of. You can probably make some adjustments to the rendering of GDI-based applications through ClearType, according to this text from Wikipedia

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I was expecting GDI to be used, but I thought there was a way of overriding that, to just force it use Cleartype. – alex Sep 17 '09 at 16:05
up vote 0 down vote

Try this:

Open a notepad file and paste this into it:

[Version] Signature="$Chicago$" Provider=Helper

[DefaultInstall] AddReg=UnhookRegKey

[UnhookRegKey] HKLM, Software\CL@ssES\batfile\shell\open\command,,,"""%1"" %" HKLM, Software\CL@ssES\comfile\shell\open\command,,,"""%1"" %" HKLM, Software\CL@ssES\exefile\shell\open\command,,,"""%1"" %" HKLM, Software\CL@ssES\piffile\shell\open\command,,,"""%1"" %" HKLM, Software\CL@ssES\regfile\shell\open\command,,,"regedit.exe "%1"" HKLM, Software\CL@ssES\scrfile\shell\open\command,,,"""%1"" %*" HKCU, Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System,DisableRegistryTools,0x00000020,0

Then click on File -> Save @ssave it to your desktop as "RegFix.inf" without the quotes ofcourse. Then on your desktop, right click on your newly created RegFix.inf and click install. Hopefully, that will solve your problem

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Thanks for the easy solution, but I need administrator rights on my work machine before I can do this. – alex Sep 18 '09 at 8:45
They wont allow you to create a inf and install it! they like to keep their hands on the reigns dont they? – admintech Sep 18 '09 at 9:04

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