[Resolved] Size of contour reported wrongly?

Post your bug reports here. Include information that helps us to understand and reproduce the bug.
Post Reply
jamadagni
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 4:10 am
Location: 11 N 78 E

[Resolved] Size of contour reported wrongly?

Post by jamadagni »

  1. Please download OFL-ed Lohit Tamil font from here and open it in FC.
  2. Go to glyph name u0BE6 TAMIL DIGIT ZERO.
  3. Open the glyph for editing by double clicking it.
  4. Click on the central unfilled circle and view its size in the Transform toolbox. It shows 395x410.
  5. Now click on the external filled circle and again click on the central unfilled circle. Now its size is shown as 410x410.
  6. Now again click somewhere outside the contours and then again click on the central unfilled circle. The size display goes back to 395x410.
As an alternate to step 6, after step 5 once more click on the central unfilled circle. This also causes the display to go to 395x410.
I also notice that if I click on the external filled circle once the size is shown as 486x504 whereas if I click it again it shows 504x504.

What gives? Which is the right size of the contours and why is FC reporting it wrongly?
Shriramana Sharma
Bhikkhu Pesala
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 9873
Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2002 5:28 am
Location: Seven Kings, London UK
Contact:

Re: Size of contour reported wrongly?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

You have aspect ratio checked. The Transform toolbar is showing you what the size will be if you click on "Apply."

Just uncheck "aspect ratio" if you want to know the current size.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
jamadagni
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 4:10 am
Location: 11 N 78 E

Re: Size of contour reported wrongly?

Post by jamadagni »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:You have aspect ratio checked. The Transform toolbar is showing you what the size will be if you click on "Apply."
Just uncheck "aspect ratio" if you want to know the current size.
This behaviour is unchanged whether aspect ratio is checked or not. Anyhow, come on -- I didn't even enter any change in the size fields for "Apply" to have any meaning. And even if Aspect Ratio is checked, it should first show me the correct current size and then modify the contour based on that correct current size only.

All I am asking is that it should show me the correct size of the contour when I click on a contour. There is no actual transform involved.
Shriramana Sharma
Bhikkhu Pesala
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 9873
Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2002 5:28 am
Location: Seven Kings, London UK
Contact:

Re: Size of contour reported wrongly?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

jamadagni wrote:This behaviour is unchanged whether aspect ratio is checked or not.
Not for me. If aspect ratio is not checked the inner contour always shows its current size — 395 x 410.

The different behaviour if one deselects the contour rather than selecting the outer contour, then reselects the inner contour is certainly surprising though.

Try this:
  1. Lock the aspect ratio,
  2. Click off the contours to deselect them,
  3. Select the inner contour (395 x 410),
  4. Then select the outer contour (which is 504x504). It is now shown as 486 x 504.
504 x 395/410 = 485.5609756097560975609756097561, which is rounded up to 486.

So the aspect ratio is stored by the dialogue when "aspect ratio" is checked. This is a really useful behaviour — insert a new circle contour, lock the aspect ratio, select an existing elliptical or rectangular contour, select the new circle contour, click on apply. The new contour now has the same aspect ratio of your existing contour.
jamadagni wrote:All I am asking is that it should show me the correct size of the contour when I click on a contour.
Then all you need to do is uncheck "Lock aspect ratio," or click off the contours before selecting another one.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
jamadagni
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 4:10 am
Location: 11 N 78 E

Re: Size of contour reported wrongly?

Post by jamadagni »

Well all this is very confusing.

Let me just say what the user expectation is of the Size tab in the Transformer toolbox.
  • If I click on a contour, the Size tab should show me its current size in W and H.
  • If I enter a numerical value for either W or H or both and click Apply, it should resize the contour to the new dimensions.
  • If Lock Aspect Ratio is on whenever I enter a value for W or H, the other field must automatically (i.e. in real-time) be updated to reflect the new values. Clicking on Apply should resize the contour to the new dimensions.
That's all. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything else is unexpected behaviour.

If one wants to make one contour have the proportions i.e. W/H ratio of another contour, one can always use one's favourite calculator program to calculate the new desired dimensions.

Of course, being able to do simple arithmetic calculations i.e. + - * / within the input fields (except those whose unit is percent or degrees) would be tremendously useful.
Shriramana Sharma
Bhikkhu Pesala
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 9873
Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2002 5:28 am
Location: Seven Kings, London UK
Contact:

Re: Size of contour reported wrongly?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

jamadagni wrote:If one wants to make one contour have the proportions i.e. W/H ratio of another contour, one can always use one's favourite calculator program to calculate the new desired dimensions.
:lol: I think I prefer the dialogue to do the calculation for me automatically.

You sure have a lot of expectations about how the program should work. How long have you been using it?
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
jamadagni
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 4:10 am
Location: 11 N 78 E

Re: Size of contour reported wrongly?

Post by jamadagni »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:You sure have a lot of expectations about how the program should work. How long have you been using it?
I have been using FC only recently, but I've been using computers for almost fifteen years and have obviously used a great variety of programs starting from very old CUIs like WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase/FoxPro. I also have written some programs for very specialized usage contexts. Doesn't that give me expectations of how UIs of programs in general would work?
Shriramana Sharma
Bhikkhu Pesala
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 9873
Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2002 5:28 am
Location: Seven Kings, London UK
Contact:

Re: Size of contour reported wrongly?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

jamadagni wrote:Doesn't that give me expectations of how UIs of programs in general would work?
Yes, that's the problem. People who have little experience with software or programming don't have so many expectations.

In twenty-four years of using software, I have done a lot of Beta testing, a lot of customising, and some coding (I did a lot of the coding for CompositeData.xml, which is used by the Complete Composites feature). The more testing I do, the less surprised I am at quirky behaviour.

The harder one looks at the detail of any software, the more bugs one can find, but its only by prolonged use of a program that one can know which bugs are important to fix and which are minor or trivial. Some bugs should actually be left unfixed, because they have useful spin-offs, and fixing them might actually make the program less useful. At best, fixing them will cause problems for existing users who got used to the program's quirkiness.

Only Erwin can tell us whether the current behaviour is "By Design" or a bug, but even if it is a bit buggy, I don't find that it is a problem at all in practice. Its just the way that FontCreator works. If it can be improved then I am all ears, but unless the improvement is truly beneficial its a moot point whether it is worth spending development time on discussing it, fixing it, then testing the side-effects just for the sake of what you perceive as "the expected behaviour."
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
jamadagni
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 4:10 am
Location: 11 N 78 E

Re: Size of contour reported wrongly?

Post by jamadagni »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:The harder one looks at the detail of any software, the more bugs one can find, but its only by prolonged use of a program that one can know which bugs are important to fix and which are minor or trivial. Some bugs should actually be left unfixed, because they have useful spin-offs, and fixing them might actually make the program less useful. At best, fixing them will cause problems for existing users who got used to the program's quirkiness.
Bhikkhu, that's all understood. See this is what I do to contribute to most of the programs that I use -- I submit bug reports. You will find many many bug reports on bugs.freedesktop.org, bugs.kde.org, bugzilla.mozilla.org, bugzilla.redhat.com and such authored by me. It is my hope that I can contribute to these projects by taking the time and effort to write out bug reports which would help the developers to improve the software which is a community effort. Now even though FC is not open-source like the above bugzilla-ed software, Erwin has been very kind and helpful to me and this is one of the ways I'm trying to return that -- that's all.
Shriramana Sharma
Post Reply