hint(ENABLE_NATIVE_FONTS);

General Discussion Other

mmt369

in General Discussion • Other • 1 month ago

Last night a strange thing happened with a program I am developing in Processing 2.0.2 on Mac OS X 10.6.8. I use the sequence in setup()
hint(ENABLE_NATIVE_FONTS);
font = createFont("Helvetica", 32, true);
textFont(font, 32);

In other places I use the font in different sizes, using textSize(theSize) in various methods, where theSize is a method argument. This has worked well until yesterday afternoon, and it works fine this afternoon.

But last night, with no change in the code, nor as far as I know in the Processing application, which still says it is 2.0.2 in the "About" dialogue, I got a red console message saying that " hint(ENABLE_NATIVE_FONTS);" was not supported in Processing 2.0.4, and to use createFont() instead. All my text outputs were distorted, with irregular baselines, some fuzzy letters, some letters faded to near invisibility. This afternoon everything again works as it had been, with crisp text (I had originally put the "hint" in the code because without it I had been unable to get crisp text).

Two questions: (1) Where did this message come from and why was my text output distorted, when so far as I know, absolutely nothing changed between when I went for dinner and when I came back a couple of hours later?
(2) If the "hint" is indeed going to be not supported, how is one supposed to produce nice-looking text?

Replies(5)

PhiLho

Re: hint(ENABLE_NATIVE_FONTS);

1 month ago

Welcome to the Fourth Dimension!

Well, I never used this hint(), because actually createFont() in Java2D uses native fonts. I am not even sure what it was supposed to do.
I just looked at the source code to see it, but the JavaDoc comments are not much helpful.
Well, in PFont, I see: " Use the native version fonts when they are installed, rather than the bitmapped version from a .vlw file" but it is still unclear, because you use either loadFont() with a .vlw font you created, or createFont() with the name of a TTF font (of the system or in the data folder), so I don't see where the alternative can be chosen.
Perhaps that's because it is unclear that I see the code in hint():

public void hint(int which) {
if (which == ENABLE_NATIVE_FONTS ||
which == DISABLE_NATIVE_FONTS) {
showWarning("hint(ENABLE_NATIVE_FONTS) no longer supported. " +
"Use createFont() instead.");
}
// [...]

This deprecation isn't new. Thanks to GitHub, I can date it back to 2012... (apparently, Processing 2.0b8).

To answer your last sentence, if you use createFont() with the name of a TTF font on your system (Arial is quite safe on most systems, I think), it should look good. Perhaps your Mac had a glitch where Arial was not available when you saw the problem? Maybe installing a new version of the font or something.

mmt369

Re: hint(ENABLE_NATIVE_FONTS);

1 month ago

Thanks. Given what you say here, I think that either I'm using createFont improperly or createFont doesn't work as I expect it to do from reading the description. I've tried Arial, Georgia, and Verdana TTF fonts, and the output looks similar apart from the differences in the typeface. The different letters have different baselines -- m, for example, has a higher baseline than most in all three fonts -- the letter edges look fuzzy, and vertical letters such as i and l sometimes half-vanish as if they were badly sampled bit-maps.

I am using createFont like this: In setup I call
font = createFont("Verdana", 32, true);
textFont(font, 32);

Then when I want to use the font, much later and in a different class, (where "lab" is a String argument to the method)
textSize(12);
text(lab, 55, yposition);

In different places, the textSize is different, ranging from 10 to 24. None of them look nice without the hint. Am I supposed to use a separate createFont for each size, or a new textFont call for each size?

mmt369

Re: hint(ENABLE_NATIVE_FONTS);

1 month ago

I installed 2.0.3, in part because the release notes said that text rendering was improved. But it isn't. It is MUCH MUCH worse. Text rendering in 2.02.was bad but legible. In 2.0.3, the letter spacing is sometimes extreeeemely wide, sometimes successive letters overlap, and mostly the letter edges remain fuzzy and the letters still vary in brightness, with varying baselines. It's terrible! (at least in Mac OS X 10.6.8). I'm going back to 2.0.2.

PhiLho

Re: hint(ENABLE_NATIVE_FONTS);

1 month ago

Just in case, check if your sketch falls in the trap described in the Why are text and graphics so ugly and blocky? article.

Although it won't explain the letter spacing issue.

One advantage of createFont() is precisely that it uses native fonts, so:
- The hint isn't necessary (perhaps it was already useless when I started to use Processing, with version 0135, some years ago, hence me not using it);
- Yes, just use textFont() with a different size.

I never really understood why we have to specify a size in createFont(), actually, since we have specify it in textFont() anyway.

Ah. Perhaps I understood both mysteries at the same time:
I suppose there was a time where, without the hint, createFont() would generate a VLW font on the fly, like we do with the tool. But I suppose the Processing authors thought this step was not necessary in Java2D mode, so skipped this step entirely.

Do you use the P2D or P3D mode? It would explain the difference of rendering between two minor versions of Processing, OpenGL is a strange beast, hard to tame.

mmt369

Re: hint(ENABLE_NATIVE_FONTS);

1 month ago

Thanks for the explanation. Yes, I use P2D in the setup, but at present there is nothing in the code that needs it. I expect to need it later in the development. And your mention of the blocky text fixed a different problem that I had not addressed.

I just tried removing P2D from the setup, and the text display is very good, better with 2.0.3 than with 2.0.2. At the moment I can live with that, but I would like to be able to use P2D (and P3D, as I want to make waterfall graphs).

I tried to include a picture of the difference between 2.0.2 and 2.0.3 text output from the same source with P2D, but the message was rejected as being too big (what is the size limit on messages? I can't find any statement of that). In both, you would have seen the varying baseline. In 2.0.3 there are no compressed words today, whereas yesterday vertically oriented ones were compressed. Today they are all expanded, a full letter space extra for each letter displayed. A possible reason for the difference is that yesterday I had a separate createFont in the main program and in a class that does the drawing. Today I removed the createFont in the drawing class before I made the samples that I can't show you.