Microsoft Font Validator lives!

13

Comments

  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    The donate button (
    http://sourceforge.net/p/hp-pxl-jetready/donate/
    )
    at the top of the downloads
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/hp-pxl-jetready/files/private-test-data/
    actually goes to my paypal account. @Dave Crossland , you want to give it a try and get me a beer to celebrate 194/194? @Aaron Bell might give it a go too :-).

    Others, please feel free to click that button ;-P.

    I'll see if I can get some properly-named set up, but that should do for now.

    (For those who wonder why Font Validator goes onto a printer driver site - well, it is the closest project which I am the sole owner, for posting work-in-progress misc things. Technologically I work on C#/mono in genomics, but putting it in my genomics area would be *so* confusing!).
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,865
    Cool. I've made donations both personally and from FontLab.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,429
    Me too. Thank you Thomas!
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    Thanks Thomas, George, Sami, Dave for clicking the donate button ! :)

    A new source tar ball and binary bundle is at:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/hp-pxl-jetready/files/Microsoft Font Validator/

    And I have put out a new hybrid build also:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/hp-pxl-jetready/files/Microsoft Font Validator/win32.hybrid/

    Since the last update, it accepts the 2015 spec newly added tables (COLR/CPAL/MATH/SVG) as valid, but does not perform any check yet. The DSIG check prints the signing time (windows-only), as well as validating the certificates against known issuing authorities (non-windows-only; 'make USE_MONO_SECURITY=true' and a separate 'DSIGInfo-mono.exe' in the binary bundle). It also generates html files for reports on non-windows, since neither chrome nor firefox's noscript extension allows web pages to read local files, to load xsl style sheet for displaying xml.

    Seeing as so many of you are interested in the GUI/visual aspect of the reports, I shall explain what the hybrid build is: some components of the Font Validator were not open-sourced - functionalities are missing. This limitation is worked around in the hybrid build by copying and re-using a few dll's from the 2003 binary. The missing functionalities currently consist of only the XML report viewer, and rasterization tests.

    Thus besides implementing 2015 spec updates [1], I have made a place-holder for discussion on enhancing FreeType for the rasterization tests [2], XML report viewer [3], unifying/abstracting the security difference between windows .NET and mono for DSIG check [4]; and given the overwhelming interests from windows users, re-implementing building with MS visual studio [5], and an interesting side project, Mac OS X stand-alone executables (i.e. without needing to install mono)
    [6].

    At the moment, Mac OS X stand-along executable is perhaps easiest - just pending me having enough disk space to do it (the procedure creates some very large temporary files), but I'd like to defer that until some progress is made on non-windows XML report viewer (and fixing problems with the aging windows one).
    MS visual studio build'able could benefit from Microsoft folks' input in the form of  supplying redacted version of the original...

    I was not sure about auto-generating the html version of the report - how many are for (chrome needs it; really only IE allows loading local xsl style sheets), and against (redundant)?

    Besides contributing code, or clicking on the donate button, some of you can help by identifying specific  areas of 2015 specs need implementing, or supplying font samples which actually make use of the latest features.

    The donate button (
    http://sourceforge.net/p/hp-pxl-jetready/donate/
    )
    at the top of the downloads do work - and please free to click! :)

    [1] https://github.com/Microsoft/Font-Validator/issues/8
    [2] https://github.com/HinTak/Font-Validator/issues/5
    [3] https://github.com/HinTak/Font-Validator/issues/6
    [4] https://github.com/HinTak/Font-Validator/issues/4
    [5] https://github.com/HinTak/Font-Validator/issues/8
    [6] https://github.com/HinTak/Font-Validator/issues/7




  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    Thanks a lot for a rather substantial donation from Glyphs.

    Seeing it seems to be a mac company, I have looked into getting the GUI to work on Mac os X, as well as without a separate mono install (i.e. Native mac os X executables). The latter is done, and basically the next time I upload binaries, I'll do that. I am not done with getting the built-in XML report viewer to work on Mac or X, but as a side effect of that, on Linux, Font Validator can use the webkit library - the backend of safari and chrome - to display the XML reports!  :)

    Actually under some condition, it can use gecko (the rendering library behind firefox, etc) to display xml also...

    So that should hopefully draw in a whole new bunch of users.

    Still waiting for @Aaron Bell to lend a hand, with less buggy older font va for the rasterization test, the original vs proj files to re-enable building with visual studio, or simply clicking that donate button :).
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,865
    Most of your potential users are on Mac OS. Even FontLab, which is one of the few dual-platform font editors, gets most of its sales on Mac. Obviously so do all the Mac-only tools.
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,992
    Most of your potential users are on Mac OS.

    I suspect most type designers serious enough to use Font Validator have a Windows computer for testing fonts, or at least have Windows installed on a Mac accessible with virtualization software. I hope nobody is selling fonts without making sure they install on Windows!

  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,429
    I suspect most type designers serious enough to use Font Validator have a Windows computer

    Sure, but most type designers use Mac OS X and would use Font Validator more often (especially to initially try it out) if it is released as a simple binary for both platforms.
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    There is a FontVal-MacOSX-*.tgz under
    (current 2016-01-06):

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/hp-pxl-jetready/files/Microsoft Font Validator/

    As I wrote before Christmas, it is a standalone mac os X command line binary, no need to install mono separately. If you have an up to date freetype, you just run it plain. If you have a vanilla mac os X box without homebrew/macport etc , you set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH to where you unpack it - there are just 3 files, the binary, and up to date freetype dylib, and libpng (which freetype depends on). I feel this deserves a new thread :-).

    The XML report viewer code has been completely rewritten. On windows it continues to use MSIE, but on Linux , the GUI can now use webkit (there are still some glitches), on wine with gecko. Sorry the XML report viewer part does not work on mac os X yet, and I am having problems making the GUI run standalone on Mac os X without mono.

    Please feel free to click :)

    http://sourceforge.net/p/hp-pxl-jetready/donate/

    I 'll start a new thread on the mac os X binary... Windows users no need to upgrade as there is no user-visible changes on windows against 2015-12-10. 

    Btw, the deadline for libre graphics meeting for April in London is this weekend. I am thinking of signing up and give a talk on this... (London is day-trip'able for me so no reason not to go!)
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    Oh, started added some code for svg table but nothing interesting to say yet.
  • attar
    attar Posts: 209
    Thomas Phinney said:
    Most of your potential users are on Mac OS. Even FontLab, which is one of the few dual-platform font editors, gets most of its sales on Mac. Obviously so do all the Mac-only tools.
    I too have most binary downloads on OSX.
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    Okay, no more messing with command lines or environment variables. New mac os "FontVal-*.dmg" disk image:

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/hp-pxl-jetready/files/Microsoft Font Validator/

    You just download, double click to open the disk image, which contains exactly one icon to click. You double-click that, it launches the GUI !

    I feel that I should get some donation on this, so please do make one (
    http://sourceforge.net/p/hp-pxl-jetready/donate/) if you find this neat :).
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,726
    Hmm. All I get when I launch it is a Terminal window with this in it:

    Last login: Wed Jan 13 20:53:41 on ttys002
    /Applications/FontVal ; exit;
    Marks-iMac:~ marksimonson$ /Applications/FontVal ; exit;
    logout
    Saving session...
    ...copying shared history...
    ...saving history...truncating history files...
    ...completed.

[Process completed]

    Maybe I missed something...?

    BTW, kudos for doing this!

  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    Mark Simonson said:
    Hmm. All I get when I launch it is a Terminal window with this in it:

    Last login: Wed Jan 13 20:53:41 on ttys002
    /Applications/FontVal ; exit;
    Marks-iMac:~ marksimonson$ /Applications/FontVal ; exit;
    logout
    Saving session...
    ...copying shared history...
    ...saving history...truncating history files...
    ...completed.

[Process completed]

    Maybe I missed something...?

    BTW, kudos for doing this!

    Oh, I see you have copied the 'visible' content to "/Applications"  :s . You shouldn't - there is a lot of hidden stuff in that folder ... ! If you really have to do that, you should recursively copy the folder including all the invisible content :(
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    There are 3 invisible folders inside :).
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,726
    Well, I also tried launching from the .dmg, which is actually what you wrote, when I checked back here trying to figure out what went wrong, but that does almost the same thing, except it stops after "exit;" and seems to be waiting for something. Hitting ^c causes it to resume in the same fashion as shown above.

    FWIW, it's quite common for apps to be distributed as .dmg's and the usual practice is for the user to copy the app the application folder and then run it, not run it from the .dmg. Running apps from a .dmg is something novices do, so my brain ignored that part of your instructions.  :/ 
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    I'll put it on my TODO list to see if I can make it work the way you want it (I.e. copy the visible icon elsewhere). The current way is more like applications in mac os classic era, where you get a disk image which contain everything visible and invisible, and you run it as they are laid out there.
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,726
    edited January 2016
    Further...

    I did a directory listing of the .dmg using the Terminal, and I only see the FontVal file (which the Finder tells me is a Unix executable), no hidden or invisible files.

    (Never mind. Now I see them.)
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,726
    Oh, and the GUI app just appeared. Guess I didn't wait long enough and hit ^c before it was finished launching. My bad. 
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    Mark Simonson said:
    Well, I also tried launching from the .dmg, which is actually what you wrote...
    When the disk image mounts, there should be one visible files and 3 invisible folders. The visible file is just a shell script, actually, so if you are up for it and really want to see why it doesn't work, you can remove the "2>/dev/null" at the end. I was hoping not to confuse people with strange messages...

    Oh, there are some reports that the first time a fontconfig based application is run, it needs to build the font cache, so if you have never had any other fontconfig based applications on your system (basically any Unix-like GUI application), the first time the GUI launches may take a while. I have no first hand experience on that...
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,726
    Woo! Looks like it works, but since it can't (yet?) display the report (so it says), it'd be nice if the path to the report could be copied or something. In any case, I found it, and it works, so that's pretty great. 
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,726
    edited January 2016
    Incidentally, what you should tell folks is to mount the .dmg, then option-drag the volume that appears on the desktop into the applications folder. This creates a folder in the applications folder containing the visible FontVal "app" and all the invisible stuff, too. So you can run it there instead of from the mounted disk image.
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    Am very glad! You haven't used it on windows before? Under report options, you can choose to have the report at the fony location or a central location of your choice (for testing multiple fonts). The default is temp and open with viewer right away (and delete after viewing). That's Microsoft's decision... I only change it such that if viewing does not work, not to delete, and tell you the exact temp location.
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    But yes, default to temp and immediate viewing isn't a good default when viewing does not work (yet) :(
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    @Mark Simonson thanks for being the first guinea pig and the feedback! I think the optional-drag volume tip and the delay on first launch needs to be mentioned somewhere as a pre-install readme... What's the usual practice for these things?
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,726
    I've only ever used it on Windows before, but always just to load some fonts, click on the Validate button, and review the results. Never explored it much beyond that.
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,726
    You could put a ReadMeFirst.txt file in the .dmg with instructions. I would have opened that first.
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    Hmm, I better get report viewing working on Mac os X also :(
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,726
    Under report options, you can choose to have the report at [any] location

    Ah! That helps a lot.
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 360
    I'll put these notes in an accompanying Readme tomorrow next to the download. The next iteration I'll put it inside the volume :).

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