Tiny font issue - 7 & 8 pt (not smoothing)

[Chris Baumbach]

I've read through all the posts I could find regarding fonts but did not see this one. It doesn't *appear* to be related to the font smoothing issue.

I commonly create layouts for printed reports that have 7 and 8 point text. It seems that Filemaker gets a little confused when displaying on the screen text this small. Consistently I will see any number of the following:

1. Extra space after the last character in a text object. In this case the text insertion cursor will blink in the extra space (as if there were three or four spaces after the last character), but when you press the backspace key will delete the last character. This is especially annoying when trying to right justify labels

2. Large spaces between words. At 9 point everything looks great (ex. "Item Description"). At 7 point it looks like "Item Description". With some fonts, 6 point looks fine again.

3. Compressed letter spacing. Usually in conjunction with large spaces either between words or after the last character.

I've tried several fonts, both "OS fonts" and third party with the same, inconsistent results. Fortunately, even if the screen text looks nasty it prints just fine. Still, it's a huge pain to adjust text based on the printout vs. what you see on the screen.

Is there any way this could be something I am doing or is it a "feature"?

Thanks

Chris

Version: 7

Platform: Mac OS X Jaguar

[Aussie John]

I've also seen some odd spacing when trying to edit text

[schmaper]

Have you heard anything else about this font/cursor issue? I'm having the same problem where there's several spaces after the text (see point 1).

[Ender]

Font Smoothing is really needed in FM7. When Font Smoothing is off, you have these spacing problems. So to fix it, just go into your System Preferences->Appearance and set the Font Smoothing to accomodate the smallest font size that you use.

[schmaper]

That answers my question. Thank you so much!