Possible corrupt file/font?

[tarakananda]

Over the past weeks we have seen strange behavior from some Nisus Pro documents. The problem is in resizing fonts. Only one font: Century Old Style Standard, and Adobe font. When trying to resize text from 14 points to 12 pts, using the down-arrow button in the character palette, the font will go from 14, to 13, and then back up to 14, rather than down to 12. Typing in 12 fails also. I can however, re-select the same font from the character menu, and can then change the size to 12. But when the document is saved, closed and reopened, the font size is back to 14 pts. If I change the font to another font, and back to Century, things are OK until I close and reopen the document, and again the resizing is lost.

I can, however, work with other fonts without this problem occurring. I have used the font book to validate the font (Century...), and I have used a program to delete the font cache on the computer, and I have deleted and reinstalled the font, and none of these steps solves the problem.

At first it was only one file which had this problem, but now it is occurring in others as well. I thought this was exclusively a font problem, but with the steps I have taken, I can only assume that there is some Nisus related element as well.

We updated to the latest version of Nisus Pro, but that did not solve the problem either.

I emailed this info to tech support, together with the file and the font, and have not received an answer for days. Is there anyone out there who can shed light on this puzzling and frustrating problem?

[martin]

Hrm, that all sounds very strange. Could you please do the following:

1. Open one of the problematic files.
2. Try to change the font from 14 pt, to 13, and finally to 12 (making sure it fails, ie: the font reverts to 14).
3. Send in a feedback report using the Help menu, including a copy of the document.

We'll see if the collected logs turn up any clues and go from there. Thanks!

[tarakananda]

Dear Mark and Martin,

I realize you have requests for help piling up, but I have not given up hoping that you will find a solution to this problem. As I have said in emails, we have cleaned the font cache and even re-installed the font (Century Old Style Standard), but it seems that the interaction between Nisus and the font in this (and a few other) documents is problematic.

Please let me know if you will have time to look at the file and logs which I sent you. Otherwise we will have to discontinue using this particular font, which we are reluctant to do. Please let us know one way or another, so we will know how to proceed.

Many Thanks,

Swami Tarakananda

[tarakananda]

Gentlemen, please let me know if you will be able to look into this for us. You have the necessary files and information. Please let me know if there is any thing else we need to do on our end to help you discover the solution to this problem.

[martin]

Sorry for the delay in our investigation of this issue. We really appreciate your patience and understanding.

It turns out this is a bug, but is a little complicated to explain. The problem comes down to a mismatch between the expected font size of your text. Usually Nisus Writer assumes the default font and size will be taken from the document's "Normal" paragraph style. However, as a fallback, should the Normal style be missing or without font information, a global 12 point font size is assumed. Your document's Normal has a font size of 14 points. As you change the font size from 14 points to 12 point, Nisus Writer does some culling of redundant formatting (ie: removes unnecessary formatting overrides). It mistakenly thinks that the 12 point size is redundant, and incorrectly removes it, which restores the 14 point size taken from Normal. This occurs because your text lacks an applied paragraph style (Normal or otherwise).

That's confusing, but luckily there are some simple ways to fix the problem. You can do either one of the following to workaround the bug:

1. Change your Normal paragraph so it enforces a 12 point font size.
2. The bug only occurs for text with no paragraph style applied. If you apply Normal (or any other paragraph style) to the text, any font size changes you make will hold.

We'll work to get this fixed, but hopefully this lets you work in the meantime. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you again for your patience!

[martin]

This issue has been fixed in the recently released Nisus Writer Pro 2.0.3.