Default font in Eclipse on OSX is terrible (and blurred)

Question

Removing

-Dorg.eclipse.swt.internal.carbon.smallFonts

from eclipse.ini and changing the font to menlo seems to improve the situation a bit. However the font is still a bit unsharp, compared to Xcode.

I don't see why they ship it like that or do they just don't care about the mac version?

Answer 1

What version of OSX and of Eclipse are you using?

• Menlo is a Snow Leopard font
• SWT has a Cocoa port in Eclipse 3.5

smallFonts were fixed for SWT Cocoa only in 3.5.

(picture of font menlo in action)

defaults write org.eclipse.eclipse AppleAntiAliasingThreshold 20

Answer 2

The workaround I found on this page https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=382972#c4 works perfect for me:

Do "Show package contents" on the Eclipse.app. Edit Contents/Info.plist. Just above

</dict>
</plist>

Place this:

<key>NSHighResolutionCapable</key>
<true/>

Then, log out or make a copy of the app so that OSX will notice the change. Now, the info window will not show "Open in Low Resolution" as checked. Launch Eclipse and enjoy your new retina awesomeness.