Descenders and letters not appearing correctly

Have a problem? A question? This is the place for answers from other Express users.
Post Reply
r-sparks
Posts: 32
Joined: 2007-02-12 15:55:30

Descenders and letters not appearing correctly

Post by r-sparks »

The most annoying bug that Nisus has, for me, is that some sometimes descenders are chopped off, unless I insert a blank line below the current text. This happens with my favourite font: Palatino.

Additionally, sometimes when scrolling or deleting, pixels are often left behind before being hastily deleted.

I recall reading a posting here saying this was a bug with OS X, and not Nisus, but I've got to say that Pages 08 doesn't suffer from this issue.

Is this something that we'll see fixed in the forthcoming bug fix?
User avatar
martin
Official Nisus Person
Posts: 5227
Joined: 2002-07-11 17:14:10
Location: San Diego, CA
Contact:

Post by martin »

The descenders of certain fonts being cut off in the last line of your document in Draft view is a bug that we will fix in an update. As for the scrolling, please see this post I made on the subject.
r-sparks
Posts: 32
Joined: 2007-02-12 15:55:30

Post by r-sparks »

No, this is happening in Page View.

Start a new document, switch to Palatino font, and type gpqpgpqpgpqgp. The spell checker can hide the missing descenders, so try a few words like peg, goggles, gap and so on. This is at default zoom of 120%.

You'll find the descenders are missing, usually until a new line is entered below. Sometimes the descenders appear after the next word is entered but this seems to depend on context.

From this automatic correction, I'd guess this is something you've tried to fix. It's just that Pages 08 doesn't suffer from this irritating problem.

I actually prefer Nisus because its representation of fonts are more dense and readable. And I like Nisus anyway :)
User avatar
scottwhitlock
Posts: 174
Joined: 2004-10-26 07:10:40
Location: Tucson, AZ

Post by scottwhitlock »

Pages '08 doesn't use the same text engine that Nisus does. Pages uses WebKit.

Scott
MacBook Pro 15
2.66 Ghz Core i7
8GB RAM
10.8.3
NWP 2.0.4
iPad 3
r-sparks
Posts: 32
Joined: 2007-02-12 15:55:30

Post by r-sparks »

Does that explain why the fonts in Pages 08 look washed out? They don't actually appear black, but more charcoal grey (especially serif fonts). Compared side by side, fonts in Nisus are dark black.

Text within Pages 08 looks like a photocopy on which somebody has set the brightness level of the copy wrongly.

Part of the reason I own a Mac is because of its superior font handling (and superior set of default fonts, including many Zapf). How the fonts are displayed are an issue for me.
User avatar
mrennie
Posts: 173
Joined: 2004-11-10 07:31:31

Post by mrennie »

r-sparks wrote:Does that explain why the fonts in Pages 08 look washed out? They don't actually appear black, but more charcoal grey (especially serif fonts). Compared side by side, fonts in Nisus are dark black.
It's not really related to the engine that is being used to display the text, I think; rather, Pages uses a different setting for font smoothing. I agree, the text looks much crisper and darker in applications such as TextEdit and, of course, Nisus Writer Express/Pro. Here's a post on that same topic which you might find interesting. Pages' font smoothing has been criticised by many over the past three years, and I also remember submitting feedback about this to Apple, but they haven't fixed the problem in Pages '08.
User avatar
martin
Official Nisus Person
Posts: 5227
Joined: 2002-07-11 17:14:10
Location: San Diego, CA
Contact:

Post by martin »

r-sparks wrote:Start a new document, switch to Palatino font, and type gpqpgpqpgpqgp. The spell checker can hide the missing descenders, so try a few words like peg, goggles, gap and so on. This is at default zoom of 120%.
Thanks, I've reproduced the problem and will see if we can't fix that for an update as well.
Post Reply