Two tool palette font bugs

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Todd
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Joined: 2004-02-18 12:24:45
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Two tool palette font bugs

Post by Todd »

Here's an easily reproducable bug for you: When I select some text and begin sampling several fonts, the font menu, on its own accord, will usually "jump" back to select a previous font. This causes me to have to scroll back to where I was. (For some reason it likes to return to Lucida Grande, even though it's not my default font).

More difficult to reproduce is this bug: for no reason that I can discern, sometimes the font menu in the tool palette is grayed-out and unselectable, forcing me to use the fonts from the Format Menu instead.

Any fixes for these? Workarounds?
charles
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Joined: 2002-11-26 11:40:35
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Post by charles »

Hi Todd:

I think we discussed this in a different post as well, but the "jumping" around is due to font substitution. Not all the fonts you have in your computer can render every character you can type. Some, for example, contain only romantic (English, French, Spanish, etc) characters while others contain only Chinese, or Arabic, and so on.

When you try to apply a font to some text, Nisus Writer (and Cocoa, actually) checks to make sure that the font you chose can display the characters. If it cannot do so, then it substitutes the font you chose for another font based on your chosen language and a variety of other things, which is why your listed font changes.

In the next release of Nisus Writer, this will change somewhat. Font substitution will still happen, but it will be "in the background." The font you pick will still be listed in the character palette.

As for the grayed out menu item, I'm afraid I don't know anything about that. However, if you can figure out how to reproduce it and let us know, then we will fix it.

-Charles
Todd
Posts: 42
Joined: 2004-02-18 12:24:45
Location: Roaming the Universe
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Post by Todd »

Glad to hear that the next version will ease the jumping-text problem. I like the ability to select a block of text and quickly run through one font to the next to see how it looks. Jumping back makes that difficult.

I still get the greyed out font-list problem from time to time, but reproducing it is elusive. It likes to happen when I'm not trying to get it. Then it stubbornly refuses to go away, forcing me to close and re-open the window.

I'll keep on the lookout.
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