[webkit-help] What is the situation regarding broken font rendering?

[Jon Rimmer]

Hi,

As described in this bug:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23364 , Webkit's font
rendering has been broken for over six years.

What is going on with this issue? Despite assurances from Dean Jackson
that it had not been forgotten, there has been no updates from Webkit
engineers since 2010. You guys have been making a welcome effort
recently around better project communication. I should hardly need to
explain what a terrible impression it gives to promise users that an
issue has not been forgotten, then seemingly forget about it for half
a decade! If there has been a decision to leave this broken, should it
at least not be communicated and explained to users?

As it is, we have a web application that makes heavy use of
transforms, transitions and animations, and it looks like garbage in
Safari, and only Safari, due to the constant flickering of rendering.
I am aware we can set -webkit-font-smoothing to force LCD antialiasing
everywhere, but that would mean losing subpixel antialiasing in
non-broken browsers that honour this property, and we have too many
Chrome users who would balk at such a sudden degradation in rendering
from what they're used to. I don't want leave the app looking like
crap in Safari, but right now it feels like I have no choice but to do
so. It would be nice to know whether there's any hope that Webkit's
font rendering will eventually be fixed?

Thanks,
Jon