Poor font rendering in Windows 8 (blurry text)

I just got my new surface pro 2. Many programs, including IE10, the modern interface (start screen), and Office 2013 render text perfectly fine. But R (an open source statistics program) does not. The text is very fuzzy.

I have R installed on multiple other Windows machines. It renders text perfectly fine on a desktop with Win7, a laptop with Win7, and another laptop with Win8. So this problem seems specific to the Surface.

Can you locate the exe file of R?

Then you can open the properies dialog of that exe file and see if you have a Compatibility property page. If yes, try to check "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings". Apply the changes and restart R. Is it still blurry?

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SvenC

That fix worked perfectly! Thanks a bunch, SvenC.

For anyone else with blurry text rendering issues with R on Surface, checking "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings" in the Compatibility tab of the Properties box for R.gui.exe completely fixed the problem.

On my machine with default install, it is at:  C\Program_Files\R\R-3.03\bin\x64\Rgui.exe 

Thanks again.  :)

I just got my new surface pro 2, and am puzzled by this problem. Many programs, including IE10, the modern interface (start screen), and Office 2013 render text perfectly fine. But R (an open source statistics program) does not. The text is very fuzzy.

I have R installed on multiple other Windows machines. It renders text perfectly fine on a desktop with Win7, a laptop with Win7, and another laptop with Win8. So this problem seems specific to the Surface.

Can you locate the exe file of R?

Then you can open the properies dialog of that exe file and see if you have a Compatibility property page. If yes, try to check "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings". Apply the changes and restart R. Is it still blurry?

--

SvenC

I just got my new surface pro 2, and am puzzled by this problem. Many programs, including IE10, the modern interface (start screen), and Office 2013 render text perfectly fine. But R (an open source statistics program) does not. The text is very fuzzy.

I have R installed on multiple other Windows machines. It renders text perfectly fine on a desktop with Win7, a laptop with Win7, and another laptop with Win8. So this problem seems specific to the Surface.

Please fix this soon! It is a major problem. The ability to install programs to actually do real work was the whole reason I got a Surface, as opposed to some other tablet.

I can live with the blur (mostly), but what frustrates me the most is when I create a PowerPoint in Office 2010 - it renders the text differently between my Windows 7 and Windows 8 PC - generally beautiful in Windows 7 and expanded, text outside the boxes in Windows 8.

Anyone tried Office 2013 SP1? Does it change anything?

I am dual booting Windows 8.1 and Windows 7.

I have installed Office 2013 SP1 on Windows 8.1 and there does appear to a slight improvement in the font rendering.

Text in Outlook and Word is still nowhere near as clear as it is in Office 2010 on Windows 7, so as far as I'm concerned it just isn't good enough.

Whatever Microsoft have done only partially addresses the problem. However, it proves they can fix this blurry text issue properly if they really want to.

It's time for Satya and Bill to assert their authority and tell management and the developers, "We want you to fix this once and for all. Nothing less than perfectly clear text is good enough for Microsoft customers".