Font Forum

Hey,

I've very recently upgraded from FontCreator 7.5 to 11.0, and am noticing a couple of differences in 11 that seem to be bugs rather than deliberate changes, which are affecting my use of the program negatively.

Firstly, when using the stock Draw Rectangle and Draw Circle tools, their contour direction seems to be randomised rather than always being clockwise - I tried to find some rhyme or reason to whether they are drawn clockwise or counterclockwise/negative, but couldn't work anything out. Fairly problematic for me as I create a lot of geometric fonts, and the random directions mean that, rather than being able to draw everything in one direction then reverse the "holes" in letters, I now have to check every single shape as it's drawn.

A more minor one, but one that's infuriating me - if I select multiple shapes, copy them, paste them and then attempt to move them, even though all of the shapes are selected it only grabs one of them, leaving the other shapes overlapping the original copies.

Finally not a bug, but is it possible to downscale the icons in FC11 to match the size they were shown in FC7.5? While the new ones are prettier, I'm not on the highest-resolution monitor and am used to having my windows fairly small to compensate. Not too big a deal if not, I'm sure I can get used to the new size.

Cheers.

NAL wrote:Firstly, when using the stock Draw Rectangle and Draw Circle tools, their contour direction seems to be randomised rather than always being clockwise.

It's not a bug, the direction is not random, and it's a feature. You no longer have to reverse the direction of interior contours since FontCreator does it automatically. For quadratic curves, interior contours will be counter-clockwise, and for cubic curves they will be clockwise.

NAL wrote:A more minor one, but one that's infuriating me - if I select multiple shapes, copy them, paste them and then attempt to move them, even though all of the shapes are selected it only grabs one of them, leaving the other shapes overlapping the original copies.

I have come across that issue in earlier versions too. If you use the keyboard cursor keys to move them there is no problem. Left/right/up/down to move by 10 funits. Shift + left/right/up/down to move by 100 funits, and Ctrl + left/right/up/down to move by 1 funit. It is much more reliable and precise than using the mouse. You can also use the Movement or Position Tabs on the Transform floating toolbar (F6)

NAL wrote:Is it possible to downscale the icons in FC11 to match the size they were shown in FC7.5?

The smallest icons are 24 pixels. The largest are 48 pixels for high resolution monitors. There is not option for smaller icons.

My most recent video tutorials use a window of 1196 x 952 pixels, which is the smallest size that allows all of the docked toolbar to be displayed without scrolling. If you look at the videos, you can get some ideas how to arrange the toolbars to maximise space on a small monitor.

What is the resolution of your monitor?

It's not a bug, the direction is not random, and it's a feature. You no longer have to reverse the direction of interior contours since FontCreator does it automatically. For quadratic curves, interior contours will be counter-clockwise, and for cubic curves they will be clockwise.

Ah okay, I'm seeing what it's doing now - reversing the shape if they overlap an existing one. While that's great for shapes that wholly overlap others (eg the hole of an "O"), I'm not keen on shapes reversing when there is only a partial overlap - I can't think of a situation where I'd want the shape to be reversed if I wasn't drawing it entirely within another. I keep ending up with things like this:

I have come across that issue in earlier versions too. If you use the keyboard cursor keys to move them there is no problem. Left/right/up/down to move by 10 funits. Shift + left/right/up/down to move by 100 funits, and Ctrl + left/right/up/down to move by 1 funit. It is much more reliable and precise than using the mouse. You can also use the Movement or Position Tabs on the Transform floating toolbar (F6)

Yeah, since posting I found out that keyboard movement still works, which is great. Definitely still an issue I'd appreciate being fixed though - I use gridlocking a lot when designing fonts, so mouse movement of shapes is still precise for me.

The smallest icons are 24 pixels. The largest are 48 pixels for high resolution monitors. (...) What is the resolution of your monitor?

I'm on 1600x900, although I tend to run multiple programs so I barely ever have FC fullscreen. Is there a way of manually switching to the 24x24 icons you mention? Believe it's using the 48x48 ones for me.

Cheers for the reply!

With the next upcoming release we will make some improvements to this. If a contour overlaps, FontCreator will then no longer try to fix the contour direction for contours that overlap. In such case a contour direction will become clockwise if you started the contour from upper-left corner to bottom-right. Etc.

The bug will also be solved.

For now we prefer the new icon sizes. Do show us a screenshot, so we can see how it looks on your monitor.

I'm using a 1600 x 900 laptop much of the time. It uses the 24 x 24 icons. My Windows scaling is 100% (I think) but don't have an opportunity to start it up at the moment to check.

The update is now available.

Grabbed the new update, the change to the automatic contour direction works perfectly and the bug is indeed solved, which is awesome - thank you very much.

For the icons, I think I am on the 24x24 ones and it's just that they're different after several years of burning the older ones into my mind. Already starting to get used to it, so no worries about that one

(editing this in as I've just seen it and already submitted a reply)

After the update, their direction is still reversed when they overlap.

The updated version, as Erwin stated, only does this reversal now if you draw the shapes in a certain direction.

NAL wrote:Grabbed the new update, the change to the automatic contour direction works perfectly and the bug is indeed solved, which is awesome - thank you very much.

This baffles me. You said earlier:

NAL wrote:Firstly, when using the stock Draw Rectangle and Draw Circle tools, their contour direction seems to be randomised rather than always being clockwise

After the update, their direction is still reversed when they overlap.

NAL wrote:Grabbed the new update, the change to the automatic contour direction works perfectly and the bug is indeed solved, which is awesome - thank you very much.

I'm glad it solved the issue.

I've made one more minor change, and I'm curious if this is a improvement or not. Can you install and try this release:
http://www.high-logic.com/tmp/FontCreat ... 77-x64.exe

NAL wrote:For the icons, I think I am on the 24x24 ones and it's just that they're different after several years of burning the older ones into my mind. Already starting to get used to it, so no worries about that one

Perfect! Even for us it took a while before we got used to the new icon set, but we are used to it, we're glad we no longer have to see and use the smaller old-fashioned icons.

I've made one more minor change, and I'm curious if this is a improvement or not. Can you install and try this release:
http://www.high-logic.com/tmp/FontCreat ... 77-x64.exe

This new version, in my opinion, is absolutely perfect - I could have got used to the first update basing rotation on which diagonal you drew the shape with if it partially overlapped something, but even then, it seemed unlikely you'd ever want a shape to have its contours reversed unless it was completely within an existing shape.

It also solves a small extra issue I've been having with FontCreator 11 having used it a little more, which I imagine will automatically be solved with this tweak - I was having shapes rotate anti-clockwise even if they were only "kissing" another one, not even overlapping it. No longer a problem, it seems

Perfect. Thank you for letting us know!