Twenty Twenty-Two: font-smoothing antialiasing setting

[happysadhu]

Currently, at the top of 2022's style.css, font-smoothing is enabled by default by the following:

body {-moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; }

Critics of such anti-aliasing font smoothing say that it actually degrades the clarity of fonts on computer screens, particularly dark text on a light background. It switches rendering from subpixel-rendering to pixel level rendering:
​https://usabilitypost.com/2012/11/05/stop-fixing-font-smoothing/
​https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1170

Perhaps, font-smoothing should not be enabled by default in the default WordPress theme.

Cheers, Sam

[sabernhardt]

Thanks for the report!

Antialiased font smoothing has been set on body or the universal * selector and/or other elements in the default theme since Twenty Nineteen. (Before that, Twenty Thirteen to Twenty Sixteen had used it specifically for the Genericons icon font, which is probably fine.)

I'm switching to "enhancement" because the style was clearly desired when the themes were created, but this ticket is about reconsidering that ​decision.

[sabernhardt]

I think it is too late now to remove the font smoothing unexpectedly in Twenty Twenty-Two.

Twenty Twenty-Two is not packaged with WordPress anymore, and the three themes that are included do not use the font smoothing.

[sabernhardt]

I'll close the ticket now. Adding the styles already was a decision for the theme, and it can stay that way.