Font Choice Impact on Performance

[Gordie]

All,

I was having some user interface performance problems (see "Yet Another Performance Question" in this forum), and I think I found something that might be very useful to folks.

It appears that if I choose a font that has no associated PostScript font (i.e., it's only a screen font), it really impacts the performance of scrolling, typing, and changing focus from field to field. When I fill a field with text using a font with a PostScript font file, UI performance is snappy.

Some of this may be due to using MacOS 10.2.8 on somewhat of a Frankenputer (an original Beige G3 with a G4 processor, Radeon 7000 PCI video card, lotsa memory, etc.), but I figured this might be useful to someone else. It is conceivable that I'm getting slow performance due to not really having full Quartz Extreme on an AGP card or such. It also may be due to FM Pro's use of a non-native text field on the Mac. Perhaps there are some imaging performance issues with that.

Examples of such fonts are typically Geneva and Monaco. I got bit by pasting text from files opened with TextEdit into fields. TextEdit defaults to Geneva when it opens a pure text file.

I'd be interested if anyone else has seen this sort of thing.

Gordie

[Fitch]

Geneva and Monaco are TrueType fonts in OS X. Are you noticing a difference between TT vs. PS fonts?

[Gordie]

Doh! I think I'm one step closer.

I must admit, my font knowledge is still back in the Classic MacOS days. I don't know what types of fonts are in most of the suitcases in my System folder. There are some fonts I've installed that are clearly TrueType or PostScript, and GetInfo identifies them as such. However, most are simply listed as data fork font suitcases.

However, I think my theory is still almost on the right track. After some more experimentation, I figured out that it is Geneva and Monaco in bold style that causes the problem. I tried other fonts (although not exhaustively), and they don't have problems, and Geneva and Monaco plain style don't have problems. I'm guessing that there is no actual bold font within the suitcase, and so the system is just faking bold. Once upon a time, fonts that were named for cities were just screen fonts and didn't have TrueType or PostScript versions. They also didn't have styled versions either (e.g., italics were just oblique renderings of the normal font). Most of those old fonts don't seem to be loaded on the system automatically any more (e.g., the famous "Chicago" font). All that's left that I can tell is Geneva and Monaco, and I wasn't aware they had TrueType versions.

I've never seen this sort of thing before. I've certainly seen that the "fake" stylized text doesn't look as good as "real" stylized text in terms of rendering, but I'd never seen a performance hit due to the lack of a styled font. There's a first for everything.

The solution is pretty simple...don't use fonts or styles that don't have TrueType or PostScript versions loaded on the system.

Many thanks,

Gordie

[Vaughan]

"The solution is pretty simple...don't use fonts or styles that don't have TrueType or PostScript versions loaded on the system."

To which an answer might be "Who in their right mind would?"

The big problem will be in systems that have users pasting text in from other applications like Word or e-mail. In this case in FMP 7 the auto-enter calculation Evaluate( Quote( fieldname ) ) will strip all formatting.

(BTW I cannot claim the honor of discovering the text stripping function. Like lost of my other great ideas, I found in in the Forums!)

[comment]

Perhaps one day someone will discover the TextStyleRemove() function.

[Gordie]

The challenge is that we actually wanted text styles retained where they existed. That's why I ended up with a mishmash of styles. I populated my database using an AppleScript to read in about 10,000 files, primarily in Word and text format. Word seemed to barf on some of the text files (bringing up a dialog asking what format to use for import). Since this was a one-time import job, I didn't spend a lot of time dealing with exceptions in my AppleScript (my AppleScript skills are not great). Therefore, I used TextEdit to extract the text from those files with .txt extensions. This reduced the amount of babysitting needed for what was about an 8-10 hour import job.

Word files retained their formatting (desired). The cut and paste job from TextEdit defaulted to Geneva Bold probably because the Aqua Screen Theme I was using (that comes standard with FM Pro) uses Geneva Bold for text fields. Vaughn asked why someone would use a font that didn't have a corresponding TrueType or PostScript font associated with it. Without intending to be flippant, the simple answer for me is that FM Pro chose it for me, and because Geneva and Monaco have been the standard default fonts for sans serif proportional- and mono-spaced fonts on the Mac since 1984. If I'd have had any clue that this would happen, I would have picked a different default theme. I have since changed the default fonts for the fields to Helvetica.

I hope my experience is useful to someone. Perhaps most folks are using machines that are fast enough not to see this problem, but if they do see something weird, maybe this explanation will help.

Gordie

[Leader]

Regarding font sizes: If a PS font package contains 10 point and 12 point but the display calls for 11 point, the system has to build a font on the fly and conceivably anti-alias it.

[Leader]

Regarding font sizes: If a PS font package contains 10 point and 12 point but the display calls for 11 point, the system has to build a font on the fly and conceivably anti-alias it.

[Leader]

Regarding font sizes: If a PS font package contains 10 point and 12 point but the display calls for 11 point, the system has to build a font on the fly and conceivably anti-alias it.