My application uses gxLayouts for text display and editing. If I create my
output using GXDrawShape to render the layout shapes, the small characters
begin to look very crude: character height varies by about 30% between some
letters and curved letterforms degenerate to rough polygons.
A Layouts (like all typographic shapes) have hints turned on by default. If the
font you're using isn't hinted at small pointsizes, using hints messes up the
appearance of the text, rather than helping it (as they should). Try using the
layout shape and setting the gxNoMetricsGridText and gxNoContourGridText bits
on in the textAttributes. The results at small sizes should be better.