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user-interfacetextwindows-7qt-creatortext-rendering

Broken text in Qt Creator UI

Sometimes (not always), certain text items in the Qt Creator UI are broken:

Broken text in Qt Creator UI

Any idea what causes it? Or a workaround?

Maybe the problem is my cheap video card (an Intel on-board one). This theory is supported by the fact that Creator is probably QML-powered by now, meaning it's running on OpenGL.

I tried restarting Creator and that fixed it, but after switching between the Welcome and Edit tabs a few times, it happens again.

I tried making Creator's UI use the software QML renderer, rather than OpenGL, as that might have made it work correctly. I did it by running the following in cmd.exe:

> set QMLSCENE_DEVICE=softwarecontext
> qtcreator.exe

But that didn't fix it.

Solution

  • It turns out the solution is the same as that to the problem I posted next, i.e. to make the app (Qt Creator in this case) use ANGLE. Except I don't want to recompile Qt Creator just to add one line of code, so I use the alternative approach in the Qt doc page, which is to set the env var QT_OPENGL to angle, before launching Creator.

    At least so far it hasn't bugged out on me.

    Note: The setting of an env var can be done conveniently with a batch file as described here.