Microsoft Font Validator runs native on Mac OS X!

13

Comments

  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    @Georg Seifert : This is great! I sent you a e-mail. The simple version - it needs to load a private copy of freetype; and when rasterisation tests work - which it does not at the moment - a run with a large CJK font could take about 18 hours to run; so one needs a progress meter or some sort of way of showing progress at some point.

    Things are relatively quick at the moment, especially with CFF opentype fonts. The slowest part of font validator is the glyf table test and the rasterisation test. The latter does not work at the moment, and the former is truetype only. With the new CFF tests (already tagged, will be uploading binaries later today) it is not much slower, as I haven't added any tests for details in charstrings - the equivalent to glyf. Things could take much longer in the future if more tests are added/working.
  • LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland
    LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland Posts: 723
    Hi Ramiro,

    Just copy the link and it works: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3563666/FontValidator0.1-2.zip Thanks Georg and Hin-Tak!
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    @Georg Seifert : tried it out - quite neat!!! In a clean vm, it is missing freetype though - so I imagine all of you probably have freetype from either Xquartz or homebrew/macport, which may not be the typical mac users. So it needs a private copy of freetype and the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH thing. The mouse cursor spins while it runs, so the progress part is okay.

    On the icon art work - you can re-use the current one, I guess, instead of draw your own - the red in yours is a rather different shade. The icon is in a file called "App.ico" which you can extract 48x48 x 32bit png out of. I can send the png over by email. The Microsoft folks may care more about branding and identity, so I would suggest either to make the icon the same or sufficiently different, and other issues with naming the tool and credits under "about".
  • Ramiro Espinoza
    Ramiro Espinoza Posts: 839
    I must say I prefer the new icon over the old :)
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    Ramiro Espinoza said:
    I must say I prefer the new icon over the old :)
    Well, I like the older Google logo better than the current new one. As far as branding goes, whoever owns the "brand" decides how it looks. So the usual rule is either you make it the same and identifiably the same, or sufficiently different and be different. It is Microsoft's decision, and I don't think Microsoft would or should switch the logo just because you like a different one.

    Let's say you want to put an "customized search" icon on your Web page to search on Google on content within your Web site. You can't decide to put your own re-design of Google's logo up. Many companies care about these things...
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    So my "you can re-use ... " is rather the typical British way of putting things in words - it really rather means "you must, no argument please, re-use ...".
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,736
    Well, if one wants to stick with the old mustard-on-a-red-satin-pillow, at least up the artwork resolution to a more modern size (512x512). 48x48 looks pretty crude on a retina screen except at very small sizes.
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    @Mark Simonson - I don't decide on what icon to use, Microsoft folks do. As for resolution, I guess redrawing/anti-aliasing based on the old is fine. If you don't like that particular shade of yellow/mustard or red, you still cannot decide to change that. Just as nobody should decide to change the color of that orange/green/blue/yellow logo of Microsoft except by Microsoft folks. You either copy the colors and shapes faithfully, or do something identifiably different.
  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 674
    I had re-drawn the logo in the old style. But it didn’t look nice. So I cleaned it up a bit. If someone gives me an image of the original icon with 512 px that one is able to dare in his dock I’m happy to put it in ;)
  • Ramiro Espinoza
    Ramiro Espinoza Posts: 839
    I will keep using the new icon version. I think Microsoft won't sue me for it. :)
  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 674
    FontValidator is under the MIT license. That means I could make my own app with it, own name and all. So a bit nicer icon should be fine. On the contrary. I can send you a new .ico file to use in the windows build ;)
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    Well, I am not incline to fork and deviate from the original design, unless there is a good reason for it - and I haven't excluded participation from Microsoft folks, although that has been lacking. I'd prefer them to address past issues, and past design decisions including this.

    Personal preference and taste isn't a good reason - if we go down that path, we could be switching to and fro between a few different icons just because different groups of people have their favorites. Anyway, I won't take such a change unless it is from a Microsoft employee.

    In any case, here is the CFF -related new commandline binary plus the freetype lib if you want to have another go at packaging (they are the same from the disk image - just saving you the trouble of fishing for them); and I have also uploaded the 48x48 x 32bit png extracted from the original windows icon file. I tried scaling it up in gimp but it is rather horrible - I don't have a hi-res display anyway. (i run mac os X in a vm).

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/hp-pxl-jetready/files/Microsoft Font Validator/misc/
  • Saga Söderback
    Saga Söderback Posts: 42
    Hin-Tak Leung said:
    Micah Stupak said:
    For what it's worth, not only do I see this in this new version, but the Windows version throws the same error in Windows 10, and unless Windows 10 is considered a non-Windows system... <shrugs>

    Micah
    Can you tell me more about your windows 10 problem? The pop up message box is a catch-all for failure to get to IE on windows, and webkit on Linux and gecko on wine (the current code can get to those three). Since IE is always on windows, I just assume any failure is non-windows. 

    If you do have genuine win 10 (rather than wine configured to be win 10), would you be willing to run a small utility I might write to pop up the actual error from the OS?


    Sorry for the delayed reply. Yep, I have real Win10 running on the newest Fusion. PM me: I am more than happy to help you any way I can.

    Micah
  • Saga Söderback
    Saga Söderback Posts: 42
     I might have just re-responded to an old post. Sorry! Too full of curry to think straight.  :D

    Micah
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    edited February 2016
    Micah Stupak said:
    Sorry for the delayed reply. Yep, I have real Win10 running on the newest Fusion. PM me: I am more than happy to help you any way I can.

    Micah
    Can you give the browsertest from here a go:

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

    It is a small example program I got the source of which I learned from. It should open a small window showing www.kernel.org when it works. I think it is similar enough - or my code is similar to it! - that they should fail the same way, I hope.
  • Saga Söderback
    Saga Söderback Posts: 42
    Hin-Tak Leung said:
    Can you give the browsertest from here a go:

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

    It is a small example program I got the source of which I learned from. It should open a small window showing www.kernel.org when it works. I think it is similar enough - or my code is similar to it! - that they should fail the same way, I hope.
    Hello –

    Looks like it works just fine in Win 10.

    Micah
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    Micah Stupak said:
    Hin-Tak Leung said:
    Can you give the browsertest from here a go:

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

    It is a small example program I got the source of which I learned from. It should open a small window showing www.kernel.org when it works. I think it is similar enough - or my code is similar to it! - that they should fail the same way, I hope.
    Hello –

    Looks like it works just fine in Win 10.

    Micah




    What error does it show if you run FontVal in this ?

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/hp-pxl-jetready/files/Microsoft Font Validator/FontVal-bin-2016_02_08.zip/download
  • Saga Söderback
    Saga Söderback Posts: 42
    Hin-Tak Leung said:

    What error does it show if you run FontVal in this ?

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/hp-pxl-jetready/files/Microsoft Font Validator/FontVal-bin-2016_02_08.zip/download
    No error in this one! I ran FontVal.exe from the bin folder and it successfully validated a font (all options checked) and displayed the report.

    Micah
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    Micah Stupak said:
    No error in this one! I ran FontVal.exe from the bin folder and it successfully validated a font (all options checked) and displayed the report.

    Micah
    Glad to know!

  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 674
    I made a few improvements. 

    - Added updater. This will make future updates easier. 
    - Added a help file. It is still very rough but should work.
    - Includes the latest binaries. 
    - Includes some missing libraries. Most people seem to have them installed already, so this wasn’t a problem.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3563666/FontValidator0.1-4.zip
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    Georg Seifert said:
    - Includes some missing libraries. Most people seem to have them installed already, so this wasn’t a problem.

    Thanks for the work.

    The problem with freetype isn't that people do not have it, but that people may not have an up to date version. Quite specific enhancement was made to freetype 2.6.1 to make it support font validator. Older freetype is shipped with Xquartz, etc and generally work okay for other purposes, but absolutely does not work correctly for font val.

    There is code to query what version it is from within font val and issues a warning if it is not recent enough. While I bundle win32/win64/mac binaries of freetype so these platforms are taken care of, most linux boxes actually still have freetype 2.5.x or even 2.4.x .

    It is possible that I might have to fork freetype when I get to (re-)implementing the rasterisation tests, because rendering (fast and ignoring/workaround silently common mistakes) and diagnostics (take as much time as needed but loud and strict about the smallest mistakes) are different directions, but I am hoping not to, and in any case, I don't have any details to that venture yet.
  • Saga Söderback
    Saga Söderback Posts: 42
    Georg Seifert said:
    I made a few improvements. 

    - Added updater. This will make future updates easier. 
    - Added a help file. It is still very rough but should work.
    - Includes the latest binaries. 
    - Includes some missing libraries. Most people seem to have them installed already, so this wasn’t a problem.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3563666/FontValidator0.1-4.zip
    This version gives me an error: "...is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the trash."

    OS X 10.10.5

    Micah
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,736
    I'm getting that, too.
  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 674
    I fixed it. Please redownload. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3563666/FontValidator0.1-4.zip
  • Saga Söderback
    Saga Söderback Posts: 42
    Looking good, Georg! Works great. Thanks very much.
  • Saga Söderback
    Saga Söderback Posts: 42
    With knowing what I know, I am guessing the answer is no, but are the rasterization tests on the possible list?

    Thanks –
    Micah
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    edited February 2016
    Micah Stupak said:
    With knowing what I know, I am guessing the answer is no, but are the rasterization tests on the possible list?

    Thanks –
    Micah
    What possible list? I think you want to read this and tell me what you think:

    https://github.com/HinTak/Font-Validator/issues/5#issuecomment-182210815

    There are some patches in my hard disk going in that direction. And looking for funding sponsors mostly - technical help-wise, Microsoft supplying a non-antique binary would help, but they are not helping.

    https://github.com/Microsoft/Font-Validator/pull/1#issuecomment-188306601

    My Microsoft contact is unhelpful. Since a 2009+ binary exists, maybe somebody outside of Microsoft has it and is willing to share. Spread the word.
  • Saga Söderback
    Saga Söderback Posts: 42
    Hin-Tak Leung said:
    What possible list? I think you want to read this and tell me what you think:

    https://github.com/HinTak/Font-Validator/issues/5#issuecomment-182210815

    "Possible list" meaning the list of possible functions. I was wondering if rasterization tests are possible, and I was guessing no because of FreeType.

    To be honest, the issue that's a little beyond my technical comprehension. Sorry.

    Micah
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    Micah Stupak said:

    "Possible list" meaning the list of possible functions. I was wondering if rasterization tests are possible, and I was guessing no because of FreeType.
    It is possible, just not quick/easy to achieve. The short and somewhat non-technical answer is that, Freetype needs to have a few extra diagnostic related functions added to do that, and there is a plan to do that. Is that a good answer?

    A slightly longer answer: the original rasterisation test is capable of detecting about 60 different kinds of truetype bytecode errors. ( though it is also very buggy and choke on about 20% of mac os shipped fonts, which indicates that it is completely useless). Initially, a Freetype based rasterisation test will only detect a small number of those - though of course freetype is a lot more fault-tolerant.
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    Since two threads touch on this , I made another one - though the hybrid branch is obsolete soon since an open re-implementation based on freetype is coming soon.

    Here is a new hybrid branch binary of Microsoft Font Validator:

    https://sourceforge.net/projects/hp-pxl-jetready/files/Microsoft Font Validator/win32.hybrid/win32.hybrid-bin-2016_02_08.zip/download

    The hybrid branch is a set of patches and reverts to allow the current code base to use a few binary-only dll's from the 2003,binary, to fill in functionalities which was not opened and not yet re-implemented in an open manner.

    Currently that just means the rasterisation tests.

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