Font window size problem

Sindre Bremnes15 January 2013 · 07:51

Strange FontLab bug: When I make a guideline global, and select the property "visual descender", the font window view suddenly changes, all characters become much bigger, filling their cells completely, like this:

It then becomes normal again after a while, but I've found no way of changing it back. Globally removing the guideline that caused it, has no effect.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I'm using FontLab 5.0.4 on Win7. The bug is gone in the 5.2 prerelease, but that is not usable yet, sadly.

Sindre Bremnes15 January 2013 · 08:55

... and by "after I while" I mean several days. Restarting FontLab has no effect.

And it has nothing to do with the font file, obviously, because now all fonts I open in FontLab looks like this. Sigh.

Edit: After opening twenty or so fonts, everything suddenly became normal again.

Johnych15 January 2013 · 12:43

What you experienced in 5.04 is actually normal behavior. Using the guideline you have set the Tools > Options > Glyph window > Dimensions > Visual descender parameter. Removing the guideline doesn't change options. If you cannot reproduce this in v5.2 then this is a bug in 5.2.

Hrant H Papazian15 January 2013 · 12:53

Sindre, this reminds me fondly of the Adobe tech support lady I hope to one day meet and strangle, who congratulated me on "finding an undocumented feature" in Photoshop... No matter how much I pressured she refused to use the B-word. She probably works for Apple now.

hhp

Johnych15 January 2013 · 13:04

Objection, Your Honor :)
FLS5MacManual reads on page 444:
"Global guidelines have an additional set of commands located in the
Guideline Is submenu. By selecting the commands in this submenu you
can set the font parameters: Ascender, Descender, Caps Height, x Height
or Visual Ascender and Descender that are used to set 100% zoom in the
Glyph Window."
Visual Ascender and Descender are described on page 77.

Regards,
Johnych

Hrant H Papazian15 January 2013 · 13:11

Objection sustained. ;-)
The fond reminiscence remains nonetheless.

hhp

Sindre Bremnes15 January 2013 · 13:17

What you experienced in 5.04 is actually normal behavior.

I see. Thank you. But why did it then reset itself after opening twenty fonts? This is really confusing. I must have misunderstood the concept of visual ascender and descender.

who congratulated me on "finding an undocumented feature"

What a fantastic example of corporate Newspeak! I bet they maintain lists.

Sindre Bremnes15 January 2013 · 13:19

Thank you, Johnych. Much appreciated.

Johnych15 January 2013 · 13:46

But why did it then reset itself after opening twenty fonts?

I can only guess. You could reset FLS options to defaults at some point.

Regards,
Johnych

Hrant H Papazian15 January 2013 · 14:05

A friend of mine recently went to an Apple Store to have a virus removed from his laptop. On his first trip they refused to acknowledge his problem. I convinced him to go back and be a bit more loud... Then they finally helped him clean the virus out, but apparently insisted on calling it "the undesirable software"...

hhp

Captured from commoncrawl.org on 18 Apr 2015. original URL