Colons don't work

[jbyun]

Just noticed this while using the font but colons are rendered as periods. Seems to be the case on the type tester at http://www.carrois.com/en/fira-4-1/ as well.

[michaelwu]

What browser / OS? Renders ok here on Linux Firefox nightly.

[jbyun]

Looks like it's only on Chrome (42.0.2311.90) in OSX (tried in 10.10.3 and 10.9)

[jfkthame]

This looks like it's probably a Chrome bug. The same problem occurs with several other characters that are composed (in the TrueType version) of two or more copies of the same "component" glyph: try " ‖ „ …

[jbyun]

Ahh.. yeah those don't work either. Can this be fixed? 😕

[jfkthame]

Actually, I think this is a font bug, not a Chrome bug.

Looking at the colon glyph in a TTX dump, for example:

<TTGlyph name="colon" xMin="50" yMin="-12" xMax="189" yMax="127">
  <component glyphName="period" x="0" y="0" flags="0x0"/>
  <component glyphName="period" x="0" y="368" flags="0x0"/>
  <instructions><assembly>
      PUSHB[ ]  /* 2 values pushed */
      1 1
      PUSHW[ ]  /* 1 value pushed */
      368
      PUSHB[ ]  /* 1 value pushed */
      48
      CALL[ ]
    </assembly></instructions>
</TTGlyph>

The bounding box in the glyph data here does not account for the second (shifted) component glyph.

I guess this is a bug in Glyphs.app, assuming that's what is being used to create the TTF files.

[jfkthame]

@carrois, can you look into this, and report to Georg if it's confirmed as a Glyphs bug?

[carrois]

We talked to Georg – this seems to be a known issue for some browsers under some circumstances. But he finally found a way to solve it within the export process.
Will be fixed within the next update!

@ Patryk: are there any further issues for this update except from the Gaelic ampersand?!
If not, we can deliver 4.101 by the end of the week when the fixed version of Glyphs is available.

[jfkthame]

I don't think this is fixed yet in 4.101: dumping the 'glyf' table shows the "colon" glyph unchanged as

<TTGlyph name="colon" xMin="50" yMin="-12" xMax="189" yMax="127">
  <component glyphName="period" x="0" y="0" flags="0x0"/>
  <component glyphName="period" x="0" y="368" flags="0x0"/>
  <instructions><assembly>
      PUSHB[ ]  /* 2 values pushed */
      1 1
      PUSHW[ ]  /* 1 value pushed */
      368
      PUSHB[ ]  /* 1 value pushed */
      48
      CALL[ ]
    </assembly></instructions>
</TTGlyph>

which still has an incorrect bounding box.

[carrois]

Think we have address that to Georg once more.

[carrois]

I just tried to fix that by decomposing /colon. Please download the files once more.
But since there are many glyphs using multible components of one base glyph I don't see that is the solution for that matter. I already adressed it to the Glyphs developer team.

[carrois]

A quick check by Georg.
Could you please check the lates version, too? Please redownload from our website.
Thanks.

[jfkthame]

I just re-downloaded, and checked a few of the glyphs. In this version, it appears that ALL composites have been decomposed in the TTF version (whether or not they were affected by the bug).

So this version should work around the rendering problem -- the glyphs now have correct bounding boxes, AFAICS -- but it's a workaround rather than a proper fix, and it means the resulting TTF files are substantially larger than they should be. (E.g. FiraSans-Regular.ttf has grown from 405868 bytes to 592288 bytes, an increase of 45% ... ouch!)

Please press Georg to actually fix the underlying bug, rather than just decomposing everything to avoid it, so that TTF fonts with components can be correctly generated.

[carrois]

Just updated to 4.102 and Mono 3.202 exported by Glyphs build 744.
Please try that verison and please report if #81 is fixed now.
Thanks for your patience!

[jfkthame]

Yes, this appears to fix the bounding box issue, and these glyphs no longer get clipped in some applications. Thanks!

I notice that the "colon" glyph in Fira Sans is still the decomposed version; now that the composite export bounding-box bug is fixed, you can presumably revert this and keep the composite glyph here.

[jfkthame]

Looks OK now in 4.103.