March 19, 200421 yr I realise that topic of font appearance has been mentioned several times already in 7 But it really is aweful and renders applications un-presentable. Does anyone know anything that can be done to improve them. Also is is even slightly possible that Filemaker will issue a very quick update that will turn their anti-aliasing feature off and revert to the OS. There was nothing wrong with the fonts in ver.6. It needs as much pressure as possible to get this "feature" turned off. How did they "miss" in the testing? Version: Developer v7 Platform: Windows XP
March 19, 200421 yr I have found that using Verdana as the screen font does not cause this problem, at least in the 10pt, 12 pt. range. Windows XP and mac OS X. Screen resolution is 1024 x 768. HTH Steven
March 19, 200421 yr I'm using Windows XP Pro with FMP 7.0v1 and have a terrible problem with text visibility. I tried installing on a different machine, turning "clear type" off and everything else I could think of. I use primarily Arial text. This is unacceptable...I can't believe how awful my solution looks ! I agree with the prior post...how could this have slipped by the QC team prior to release? I hope a fix is posted very soon... Version: v7.x Platform: Windows XP
March 20, 200421 yr FileMaker 7 has its own built-in font and vector smoothing engine. Some Qs I'd like to know: does Windows' font smoothing interact with FM's? Does FM use Window's non-standard smoothing (see below)? Microsoft smoothes fonts based on non-standard information stored in TrueType fonts (a GASP record). If the font does not have this info, Windows uses a default font size & "hints" to do smoothing. In Windows 2000, the default is 16pt. Some Arials and Trebuchet have the GASP record, they are smooth at smaller sizes. Try Trebuchet just to see if Windows' smoothing is part of the problem. For a fussy customer (my sister...), I made an FM6 font test (some db fields & labels in different fonts). I just converted it to FM7 under Windows XP. The fonts looked fine. So, why do some folks with XP have issues & others don't? Perhaps we should exchange files to see if the problem can migrate.
March 21, 200421 yr Thanks for the feedback... I tried turning off "clear type" technology with no change. I then went into Advanced settings for the display and turned off "smooth screen fonts"...same thing, no change. Substituting Trebuchet (a neat font BTW) doesn't help either. I feel I can't release this solution at my hospital and I can't move forward with several installations of FM7 until this font issue is fixed. The thought of deploying the solution on FM6 is not appealing...the new functionality in 7 is great.
March 22, 200421 yr I am using Verdana. It looks horrid. I tried many other fonts and different sizes. All awful to look at. This is on a flat panel 1280x1024 res. I am not sure I can stand to look at it long enough to learn it! My eyes will go buggy. Version: Developer v7 Platform: Windows XP
March 22, 200421 yr The plot thickens... Attached are two items. First is a FM7 Font Test db, the other is a screen snapshot of the first on my XP PC. I think fonts smooth nicely in FM7 on both my PC and my Mac. FM7 on my PC has "Font smoothing style" set to "Dark". The Mac version of FM7 running in Panther does not have this setting. Would folks with problems please run FM7 Font Test.fp7 and post a screenshot. Let's track this down & get it solved!!! Version: v7.x Platform: Mac OS X Panther FM7 Font Test.zip
March 22, 200421 yr Definitely doesn't smooth nicely here. Blurry even with my glasses on. However the screen shot when opened may not adequately show the results. Version: Developer v7 Platform: Windows XP FontsTest.zip
March 22, 200421 yr Here's an example of the garbage I've been met with. Haven't changed a thing, just did a screen shot in dev5.0 and dev7.0. All Verdana. Monitor set to 1280x1024, font smoothing=Dark, winxp. My customer runs xplatform, so this will be lots of fun trying to find an acceptable solution. FontTest.zip
March 22, 200421 yr bcooney, That is what I see too. I sent in a message through the official FM channel. They are probably busy today, so I will likely hear from them next week on what they are doing to correct it. Yeah, Right. Version: Developer v7 Platform: Windows XP
March 23, 200421 yr Roger's screenshot compared to mine shows a definite problem with font rendering. See the attached TIFF image, magnified to 200%. We're both running XP, I have FM7 Pro, Roger has Developer. Both are rendering from the same base color of the font 113,0,0. My FM7 is rendering neighbor pixels brighter and more saturdated that Roger's is. Some others with this problem have stated they're using Developer. Is anyone seeing this problem with Pro? Version: v7.x Platform: Mac OS X Panther FM7-Fonts-Pro-Developer.zip
March 23, 200421 yr Clarification to last post: So far the font problem in FM7 seems to only be on Windows, and only in the Developer version. So anyone seeing this in Pro (either platform) or Developer for Mac, please post a screenshot!
March 23, 200421 yr OK this is embarassing...how do I do a screen shot to get the image of my font problem ? I am using FM7 and have fuzzy fonts....but, when I open the "font test" attachment, the fonts look fine. I seem to have the problem whether I create a brand new file or convert a prior FM6 file. Strange...
March 23, 200421 yr > OK this is embarassing...how do I do a screen shot to get the image of my font problem ? Don't be... I forgot how to do it (again...), and screenshots are buried in Windows Help. Press the Print Screen key to copy the current screen. Paste it into Paint (in Start Menu>Programs>Accessories). Save the image as TIFF (best for cross-platform viewing). Don't save as jpg: we're looking for minute details and don't want any loss of image quality. Also note that pressing alt and Print Screen copies just the active window to the clipboard.
March 25, 200421 yr Attached are font test files from FM 7.0v1 and also FM 6.0v4. Both files were opened on the same computer running Windows XP Pro, displyed on an LCD panel at 1280 x 1024. In the case of the FM7 file, font rendering was set to "dark" although the other settings did not produce better results. The screenshot files were captured using as near the same settings as possible. I can see a BIG difference in the way the fonts are rendered...FM6 is much sharper (see the numeral "1" in the Arial test ! This was a great suggestion on the part of the forum, I hope it helps. Version: v7.x Platform: Windows XP
March 25, 200421 yr let me try the attachments again... Version: v7.x Platform: Windows XP FM6v4FontTest.zip
March 25, 200421 yr i guess i'll do it one at a time... Version: v7.x Platform: Windows XP FM7v1Font Test.zip
March 25, 200421 yr Even though the difference is obvious and hopefully FMI will do something about it, is the 7 version of the fonts so dramatic as to prohibit rolling solutions out to customers? Maybe I have good glasses or something, but I think the fuzzyness ain't all that horrible...
March 25, 200421 yr It's pretty distracting, especially when surrounded by clear fonts...in this screen shot the FM program text is very clear. A whole screen filled with fields looks terrible... Version: v7.x Platform: Windows XP ScreenShot.zip
March 25, 200421 yr Attached is another comparison blowup pic, courtesy of shadowdoc's screenshots on Windows XP. Recall that FM7 uses its own font and graphic renderer and FM6 uses the OS's (Mac or Windows). FM7's GDI+ rendering engine's anti-aliasing algorithm averages each pixel giving too much weight to its neighbors. So the base part of the font (what would be visible without anti-aliasing) is over-smoothed, making it more like the background than the font color (lighter for black text on white). FM7's GDI+ rendering engine uses ordinary anti-aliasing. Ordinary anti-aliasing uses colors from the gradient between the font and the background colors. This works well for CRTs. FM6, uses the OS's anti-aliasing, on Windows (set up for an LCD) this is ClearType. LCD anti-aliasing uses colors outside the gradient. The extra colors take advantage of the way the colors for each pixel are laid out on an LCD to trick the human eye into seeing greater smoothness. In the pic yolu can see reds to the left and blues to the right. <start of rant>Although M$ calls this technique "ClearType" and claims it was their idea, the technique has been well-known for years.</end of rant> Version: v7.x Platform: Mac OS X Panther FM7vsFM6.zip
March 25, 200421 yr So what do you think is the bottom line...will we be stuck with this form of aliasing...I hope not.
March 25, 200421 yr Beside's the usual write to Filemaker, let's hope for two avenues of change: 1) FileMaker employees who design the app read this forum. 2) Our FSA partners bring this issue to FileMaker's attention.
March 26, 200421 yr Newbies When I called tech support to complain, what I found disconcerting was the acknowledgement that FM knew about the fuzzy problem before they released FM Pro 7.0.
March 26, 200421 yr my eyes.. my eyes.... This is a joke. I would have to re-do all my layouts to accommodate for the fuzziness. Interesting to note that in any drop-down list the font is crystal clear.
March 26, 200421 yr I had planned to deploy a solution using FM7 to at least 8-10 users. That will have to wait for a fix to be released. Our solutions are judged not only on functionality, but also on appearance. This is a real problem. This wreaks of the "corporate software" attitude of release it now and patch it later...
March 26, 200421 yr Newbies I rather make the FM employees used the databases in FM 7.0. That should correct the problem quickly.
March 26, 200421 yr For those who are using WIN XP, have you tried the Clear Type option? I have found that it makes the blurriness a little easier to read. Right click on desktop- Display Properties > Appearance > Effects [button] - Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts. It helps a little.
March 26, 200421 yr Actually I already had this option set, and still I find the results extremely blurry. Regardless of whether some special trick or OS setting will improve the font problem, FM7 should not force us and our users to change our current OS settings to accomodate this font problem. Who knows what other problems this might bring up in our other non FM applications, not to mention the support nightmare that this will produce as we try to upgrade the hundreds of users in some enterprise applications. I am all for change when it brings improvement, but we had a perfectly good font system in FM6 and I fail to see how this new font rendering engine in FM7 has improved anything.
March 26, 200421 yr http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm This is the link to a clear type tuner. It may help a little more. I would bet that because of all the attention this is getting, FileMaker is rushing for a fix of it. I personally love the program, and can get around this problem for the time being when considering that FileMaker based its 7 re-write on user input.
March 27, 200421 yr Wow! The ClearType tuner is great! Kudos to Microsoft (something I very, very rarely say...). To restate: FileMaker 7 has its own built in font rendering engine. It does not use Windows' built in engines. Setting smoothing in the Displays Control Panel tab to ClearType, Standard, or no smoothing will have NO effect on what you see on FileMaker 7 layouts. To verify this, I set XP to all three, ran a FM7 database, took screenshots, and compared the text. The text was identical pixel for pixel.
March 27, 200421 yr Hmm, without a doubt it makes changes on my layouts, changing graphics, wingding fonts for cool buttons and field labels/text. I wonder what the difference would be.
March 27, 200421 yr For Mac You can adjust the font size at which text smoothing will not operate and how heavy the effect is. (system prefs/appearance) Remember to restart filemaker to see the effects. I have it set to turn off below 9 point and that seems good
March 27, 200421 yr I learned something today... The font smoothing in FM7 on a Mac running OS X Panther does respond to the smoothing settings in the Appearance control panel. Aussie John & Hurican-> Please take screenshots of your FM smoothing and not smoothing & post them here, I'd like to compare them in Photoshop. As I said, my tests showed that Windows settings had no affect (XP & FM7).
March 27, 200421 yr I agree with CyborgSam...the clear type tuner definitely improved my non-FM text, but I see no improvemnt in FM7. I wonder how many other bugs are in FM7 that were known about at the time of release...
March 27, 200421 yr The Font Smoothing option in Appearances does matter, at least in OS 10.3.3. Lower it below 10 and size 10 is smoothed, raise it and it is not. You have to switch modes or otherwise refresh the screen. Looks not so great either way, but not bad either (this is on a Mac). I preferred it not smoothed. But smoothing is the future (if not present) of computing, so we'll have to live with it in some way.
March 27, 200421 yr CyborgSam said: I learned something today... The font smoothing in FM7 on a Mac running OS X Panther does respond to the smoothing settings in the Appearance control panel. Aussie John & Hurican-> Please take screenshots of your FM smoothing and not smoothing & post them here, I'd like to compare them in Photoshop. As I said, my tests showed that Windows settings had no affect (XP & FM7). Sam- you need to restart filemaker to have effect attached file with smoothing on to all font sizes-see next post also Version: v6.x Platform: Mac OS X Panther all smooth.pdf
March 27, 200421 yr without smoothing attached- Best seems to be somewhere in between at stopping effect at 9 points and below The smoothing is on the medium setting 12 point and above.pdf
March 27, 200421 yr Fonts are designed for different purposes. A font designed specifically for the screen should look good without smoothing, in fact smoothing can make it look worse. A font designed for print will generally look better with smoothing, but it's not a given. In the good old days, font designers took the time to make bitmap versions of their fonts so they'd appear optimally on the screen. Nowadays the font rendering engine does bitmapping for all pixel sizes (regardless of smoothing). Progress? Not in my mind. My 53yo eyes can still read Geneva 9 or 10 on the Mac, but I have trouble reading the newer fonts with no bitmaps. Apple's solution was to create Lucida Grande, which was specifically designed to smooth well using Apple's Mac OS X rendering engine. Fenton's right, we'll have to live with it. As display resolution increases (dot-per-inch), the smoothing becomes less of an issue. Give me bitmaps or give me death? Tough choice
March 27, 200421 yr Author As the person who started this topic off, I for one do not accept that we simply have to live with it. It is clearly a major issue to large many people and as such it is essential that Filemaker address the issue. Ver 6 was fine - call me naive but can it be so difficult to put the smoothing engine back to what it was in earlier verions? This is not just a "nice to have" but a real essential for a large number of people. It renders solutions unviewable and very unprofessional and it is down to Filemaker to address it. The last hing I intend to do having just forked out
March 27, 200421 yr As the person who said "we'll have to live with it," I apologize if you thought I meant you'd have to live with unacceptable fuzziness. What I meant was that font smoothing is not going away, so we'll have to deal with it, by increasing font size in some cases where it was just too small. I don't think it is a solution to have to tell all your clients that they must turn off font smoothing on the their system, even if that was an option. I was mostly responding to the statement (later recanted) that on Macs FileMaker was using its own proprietary smoothing independent of the operating system, which it isn't. I support those of you on PC's kicking up a huge fuss, if FileMaker is using its own smoothing independent of the operating system and if this is causing problems (which it obviously is). On Macs we are not seeing this, though just having smoothing enabled is causing a little fuzziness; but it's acceptable (barely), in any case the same as other apps. Many of my clients are on PCs. I've already had one upset client who can no longer read his text. He uses 7 because of its Japanese language support (which he's real happy about). In his case, it was he who designed the layouts and insisted I use a small font size (which I could barely read on my Mac), and it is he who will redo the layouts (it was mostly a simple solution). But I can imagine a nightmare if I delivered a solution and had to resize all the font boxes (you can resize them all at once on a layout, but this may cause some havoc).
March 27, 200421 yr We shouldn't have to resize anything to suit a software flaw that should have been dealt with BEFORE the app was released. This is not a neat feature of the program we're talking about, it's a basic requirement of the program that it be capable of rendering fonts correctly on both platforms with "usual" settings. It's FM's job to make sure the program can get along in the computer world...not ours. Besides, I tried 14 and 18 pt text and the problem still exists...I can't go any larger than that. Version: v7.x Platform: Windows XP
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