Dropdown and PopUp fonts

[Jim Lah]

Can anyone explain to me why the fonts being displayed in my pop-up and drop-down value lists are different?

The drop-down list provides a nice clean font, whilst using a pop-up for the same list provides a scrunched up font - barely readable.

The attached screen shots show the problem.

[Johnnycode]

Jim, I had a similar problem once upon a time on a system level. It turned out to be a system modification utility by the name of Tinkertool. So, if you're running anything like that, you might try disabling it to see if it's the culprit.

[Jim Lah]

I'm not aware of any system utilities installed - but thanks for the reply.

Does anyone else have any ideas?

Jim

[Raybaudi]

Can you post an example file ( .fp7 , not a .png ) ?

[Jim Lah]

Example is attached - very simple - it shows that Drop Down's include nicely formatted text, whilst the PopUp generates ugly text. PNG's are included to show what it looks like on my Mac.

DropDownEx.fp7.zip

[Johnnycode]

Jim, it's a font rendering issue (as if you didn't know that already ). Now, whether or not it's FMP, font or system related, I don't know. But it does the same on my Mac, as it does on yours. Try changing it to a similar font and see if that makes a difference.

Edit: After a little more research, my guess is the pop-up menu is using a different font rendering engine than the fields and drop-down menu. Don't know why that would be, but it seems the only logical explanation to me, as changing fonts didn't help, IMHO.

Johnny

Edited January 14, 2009 by Guest
Further research changed my opinion.

[Lee Smith]

In a word, Helvetica

My guess would be that you have one using Normal, and the other Narrow

Also, there are so many Font Factories that have their own version available, I got out of the habit of using Helvetica in graphic design, and FileMaker Layouts.

HTH

Lee

Edited January 14, 2009 by Guest

[Raybaudi]

Example is attached ...

Just to check... this was modified on win.

DropDownWin.zip

[Inky Phil]

Just in case it helps, both fields (on the original file) look fine on my machine. 8.5 adv on xp

Phil

[Jim Lah]

It does appear to be a font rendering problem - it looks like a different system is used for pop-ups than drop downs. It looks like a bit mapped font of old.

The font used in both fields is Helvetica - both of the same style.

I have tried differing fonts and run the same example on different Macs - same issue. I have tried FM10 and FM9 - same issue. I don't seem to be able to find a font that is anything but scrawny on a pop-up at around 12pt.

Interesting that the problem appears not to occur on XP. The file has not been converted through Win at any stage.

I would really like to use the pop-up feature but this font rendering make the whole application look ugly.

[comment]

It may have something to do with the checkmark they add to the left of the selected value. IIRC, this problem has been there since version 3 at least. It is less noticeable with some fonts - Helvetica is probably the worst choice for this. The issue is actually more serious than just cosmetics: even with Lucida Grande, many non-ASCII characters display as question marks.

[Lee Smith]

Here is the screen shots from my Mac of your file with Verdana as the font.

[Jim Lah]

Thanks - Verdana is certainly much more usable.