Enhance the Font Validation Wizard and Validation Toolbar

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Myrna Larson
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Enhance the Font Validation Wizard and Validation Toolbar

Post by Myrna Larson »

RE the Font Validation Wizard (and the Validatation Toolbar):

Make the Wizard's Report non-modal (i.e. you don't have to dismiss this dialog before you can do anything else).

This would allow the user to double-click on the line that identifies a bad contour and bad point. Doing so would take you to the glyph in question, switch to point mode and select the offending point.

When Contours with Unknown Direction are present, ALWAYS list the contour number and location of the bad point. I don't always see this (does anyone know why?), and have to "walk" through the contours until I find the bad one, then take a guess at where the problem is and "walk" through the points. This may take 5 minutes or more. The previous suggestion re clicking on the error line would also apply here.
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Re: Enhance the Font Validation Wizard and Validation Toolba

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Myrna Larson wrote:RE the Font Validation Wizard (and the Validatation Toolbar):

Make the Wizard's Report non-modal (i.e. you don't have to dismiss this dialog before you can do anything else).

This would allow the user to double-click on the line that identifies a bad contour and bad point. Doing so would take you to the glyph in question, switch to point mode and select the offending point.
This might be useful indeed. But it might lead to confusion, as fixing one glyph, might also fix other glyphs, but might also lead to problems with other glyphs. The opposite is also true, and there are probably more scenarios. So how to handle that?
Myrna Larson wrote:When Contours with Unknown Direction are present, ALWAYS list the contour number and location of the bad point. I don't always see this (does anyone know why?), and have to "walk" through the contours until I find the bad one, then take a guess at where the problem is and "walk" through the points. This may take 5 minutes or more. The previous suggestion re clicking on the error line would also apply here.
In this situation, it is not possible to determine the exact position of the problem, but I guess we could display the contour index.
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Dick Pape
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Post by Dick Pape »

I hope I understand your question.

I don't edit from the Font Validation report, but use it as a list of the individual glyphs which need work.

When editing a glyph which has edit errors, if you "Show Glyph Validation Report" (View/Toolbars/Validation - F7), you can click on the error and be routed to the point in question - which is centered in the open window. You may have to be zoomed in enough (>200%) to clearly recognize the problem point, but it does get you there automatically.

After a while the necessary fix is mostly obvious which makes correcting straightforward.

"Contours with an incorrect direction" is a "catchall" msg meaning validation is not complete because edit errors exist. Once the errors are corrected that msg disappears (is resolved).

I have gone through large gory glyphs without every "coming up for a breath" by clicking one error after another. Very rarely do I know which contour is which.
Myrna Larson
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Re: Enhance the Font Validation Wizard and Validation Toolba

Post by Myrna Larson »

Erwin Denissen wrote:This might be useful indeed. But it might lead to confusion, as fixing one glyph, might also fix other glyphs, but might also lead to problems with other glyphs. The opposite is also true, and there are probably more scenarios. So how to handle that?
First, one could point out these issues in the manual and on-line help.

Re one fix correcting other glyphs. I assume you are talking about composites, right? I would assume that real-time validation would be automatically turned on and the validation toolbar displayed. If that's the case, when the user selects the "auto-corrected" glyph, he/she would see a message that the glyph [now] has no errors. And if it's a composite, the reason should be obvious to the user.

Re one fix creating errors with other glyphs. Again, the user would be aware of this from reading the manual and/or help. Obviously at this point the Wizard's report is out-of-date, and the user would have to run validation again. BTW, does this never happen when one checks the "Fix errors" box?
Erwin Denissen wrote:In this situation, it is not possible to determine the exact position of the problem, but I guess we could display the contour index.
As part-time programmer, I find that interesting. When you found that you couldn't determine the direction, what characteristics led you to that conclusion? Can you elaborate on the problem? (My interest in this point comes from 40+ years of programming experience. I don't intend this comment to be critical.)
Myrna Larson
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Post by Myrna Larson »

Dick Pape wrote:I hope I understand your question.

I don't edit from the Font Validation report, but use it as a list of the individual glyphs which need work.
What I am trying to eliminate is the need to save that list to a file and print it out or write down the glyph numbers by hand, and to have to move from, say, glyph 7 to glyph 63, with ALT+RIGHT, etc.
Dick Pape wrote:When editing a glyph which has edit errors, if you "Show Glyph Validation Report" (View/Toolbars/Validation - F7), you can click on the error and be routed to the point in question - which is centered in the open window. You may have to be zoomed in enough (>200%) to clearly recognize the problem point, but it does get you there automatically.
I never realized that, I think because, even though the point is centered in the window, I'm not usually zoomed in far enough to see anything change on-screen. Is there anything in the manual or help file about this? I guess the real problem is that THE POINT ISN'T SELECTED. Even worse, if I have selected another point, the status bar information refers to it, not the problem point.
"Contours with an incorrect direction" is a "catchall" msg meaning validation is not complete because edit errors exist. Once the errors are corrected that msg disappears (is resolved).
That hasn't been my experience. I have found glyphs (usually in free or shareware fonts) where this is the ONLY problem. When I identify the problem contour, then "walk" through the points, I DO find the point at which I move backward.
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Re: Enhance the Font Validation Wizard and Validation Toolba

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Myrna Larson wrote:BTW, does this never happen when one checks the "Fix errors" box?
No, it never should happen. If it does happen I consider it a bug.
Myrna Larson wrote:As part-time programmer, I find that interesting. When you found that you couldn't determine the direction, what characteristics led you to that conclusion? Can you elaborate on the problem? (My interest in this point comes from 40+ years of programming experience. I don't intend this comment to be critical.)
I'm not going into too much technical detail. If you want to know more, contact me privately. Here is a self intersecting contour with just four points, that obviously has an unknown direction.

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Post by Erwin Denissen »

Myrna Larson wrote:I never realized that, I think because, even though the point is centered in the window, I'm not usually zoomed in far enough to see anything change on-screen. Is there anything in the manual or help file about this? I guess the real problem is that THE POINT ISN'T SELECTED. Even worse, if I have selected another point, the status bar information refers to it, not the problem point.
That's a nice enhancement, I'll add it (for both contour and point selection) to the to-do list.
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Myrna Larson
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Re: Enhance the Font Validation Wizard and Validation Toolba

Post by Myrna Larson »

I'm not going into too much technical detail. If you want to know more, contact me privately. Here is a self intersecting contour with just four points, that obviously has an unknown direction.
Yes, I see the problem with that example. If the first point is at the upper left corner, and the contour is clockwise, I would personally identify the 4th point as the culprit (the line connecting points 3 and 4 is the one that crosses the line connecting points 1 and 2). But I can see it could be difficult to come up with a general algorithm that would work with all problem contours.

The situation I am usually dealing with shouldn't present that dilemma. It typically turns up when I use the glyph transformer to scale glyphs smaller, e.g. to create small caps.

The "contour with unknown direction" is usually due to the fact that just one point has been moved so it is on the wrong side of the next point or (at my usual zoom level) underneath it. Usually one point is on-curve and the other off-curve.

In fact I often find this same problem with some commercial fonts -- even though I haven't modified them in any way!
Brother Gabriel-Marie
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Allow Non-Modal Validation Results

Post by Brother Gabriel-Marie »

When we run the validator, it gives us a report. However, since the window is modal, you can't keep it open and view its contents whilst working in FC. I propose it be made non-modal.
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Re: Allow Non-Modal Validation Results

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
Brother Gabriel-Marie
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Re: Allow Non-Modal Validation Results

Post by Brother Gabriel-Marie »

Yes, it was mentioned there in that thread, but the modal-ness of the particular thread entry was not really the topic of discussion.
Postby Myrna Larson » Tue Nov 06, 2007 11:00 pm

Dick Pape wrote:I hope I understand your question.

I don't edit from the Font Validation report, but use it as a list of the individual glyphs which need work.
What I am trying to eliminate is the need to save that list to a file and print it out or write down the glyph numbers by hand, and to have to move from, say, glyph 7 to glyph 63, with ALT+RIGHT, etc.
And I don't see that the point was answered or solved unless I am missing something; besides, that post was from 2006.
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Re: Allow Non-Modal Validation Results

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Erwin Denissen wrote:
Myrna Larson wrote:RE the Font Validation Wizard (and the Validatation Toolbar):

Make the Wizard's Report non-modal (i.e. you don't have to dismiss this dialog before you can do anything else).

This would allow the user to double-click on the line that identifies a bad contour and bad point. Doing so would take you to the glyph in question, switch to point mode and select the offending point.
This might be useful indeed. But it might lead to confusion, as fixing one glyph, might also fix other glyphs, but might also lead to problems with other glyphs. The opposite is also true, and there are probably more scenarios. So how to handle that?
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
Brother Gabriel-Marie
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Re: Allow Non-Modal Validation Results

Post by Brother Gabriel-Marie »

Maybe it could be an "advanced option" - so far that's two requests.
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Re: Enhance the Font Validation Wizard and Validation Toolbar

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

This has been implemented in FontCreator 10.

After running the Font Validation wizard, those glyphs that still have validation errors can be filtered by using the Validation Issues item in the Trouble-shooting area of the Glyph Overview panel. As the glyphs are fixed, they will disappear from the filtered list.

Image
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
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