Microsoft VOLT lives!

Sami Artur Mandelbaum

After almost 8 years!

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3011

Microsoft VOLT 1.4.273 release notes

 

Overview

 

Since the last public VOLT release we have added various features and made improvements across the product. Here is a quick list of changes, followed by a detailed description:

 

-      Compiler optimizations enabling significant savings in compiled table size

-      Compiler optimizations to support fonts containing extensive anchor or cursive attachment lookups

-      Support for mark filtering sets in compiler and user interface

-      Speed improvements for project compilation, loading, and saving

-      User interface improvements

-      Multiple bug fixes across VOLT including the compiler, project import and export, and across the UI

 

 

Detailed description of VOLT changes

 

Compiler improvements

New optimizations towards reducing the size of generated layout tables, including contextual and pair positioning lookups. Savings in size are significant especially with fonts containing a large number of complex contextual lookups. In some cases, savings allowed 4x reduction in compiled table size. 

The compiler is now able to compile GPOS lookups with a large number of defined attachment anchors. This was one of the most serious compiler limitations without any workaround for font developers to overcome.

 

VOLT now implements mark filter glyph sets introduced in OpenType specification 1.6. Using mark glyph sets is almost the same as mark attachment classes, except the user is required to put '*' in front of mark group name in lookup editing window. This syntax is intentional, to prevent a user from accidentally creating overlapping mark classes.

 

In addition to automatic optimizations, VOLT added ability to manually control format of pair positioning lookups. User can specify format explicitly by adding _PPF1 or _PPF2 at the end of lookup name.

 

User interface

Extended proofing tool to support fonts with more than 100 lookups.

Fixed form layout problems when content is obstructed by thick window borders.

Fixed positioning lookup window so position inside grids is preserved during window resize.

Added menu item for importing project ignoring glyph definitions.

 

Various fixes

Fixed project corruption when editing lookups with EXCEPT context.

Fixed VOLT crash involving caret attachment lookups in some situations.

Fixed compilation error of projects using very long anchor names.

Other fixes in VOLT compiler and user interface.

Sergey Malkin

This version is roll up of all changes and fixes we made since last public release. Many of them had been done years ago and used by some users, mostly our vendors.

VOLT page on Microsoft Typography site is now live with some resources you may find useful:  https://www.microsoft.com/typography/VOLT.mspx. You can also find page containing same release notes you posted above at https://www.microsoft.com/typography/VOLT%20Release%20Notes/default14.mspx

If you experience any problems, use this thread to ask questions or create a new one. Thanks for using VOLT!

Thomas Phinney

Interestingly, it would not install on my Windows 10 VM, but installed fine on my Windows 7 VM. It gave a fairly generic error message:

This installation package could not be opened. Verify that the package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer package.

Yet launching the same file from the same location worked just fine on Windows 7.

Sergey Malkin

What browser you used to download it? Did you run it directly from download folder or saved somewhere locally first?

Thanks,
Sergey

Thomas Phinney

I downloaded from Chrome on Mac and ran the installer from the download folder. The exact same installer file ran fine on Windows 7, not on 10.

Thomas Phinney

Moving it to the desktop first didn't help.

Sergey Malkin

I can't tell what happens exactly, but what I found on Internet suggests some security setting on the account prevent you from running any installer. You can try one of the following options:

- Run console window as Administrator, and try "msiexec.exe /i MicrosoftVOLT.msi" command.
- or: right-click on msi and choose "Troubleshoot compatibility" option. Then try installing again.
- or: login to administrator account and run msi from there (some suggested to use real "Administrator" account, not just member of administrators group)

Thanks,
Sergey

Hin-Tak Leung

I just took the old v 1.3 off and tried putting the new v1.4 on in wine, and see that the installer is trying to register 9 COM servers. 3 of them are specific to VOLT, and the other 6 seems to be generic of a few Microsoft products (e.g. comdlg32, richtx32).

I think registering com servers would definitely requires admin privilege. Also, the older COM technology is rather 32-bit arch specific and might be troublesome under the newer 64-bit windows's wow64 emulation. I assume win10 is even more 64-bit than win8, which was already troublesome when I was trying to run the win32 hybrid branch of the new Microsoft Font Validator.

By comparison, the 2003 Microsoft Font Validator also registers one COM server, and possibly also depends on comdlg32 being registered. Both of those dependencies were rewritten/removed recently.

Hin-Tak Leung

If the Microsoft folks don't mind, we can discuss about bypassing the installer, and talk about copying over the installed executables from one machine to another, manually registering the com servers (see if you have the privilege to register com servers), and see if the result works?

Sergey Malkin

Unfortunately VOLT is still written in VB6, so COM is required for UI components. I can get rid of COM in some VOLT components, but not all of them.

Copying files and registering them manually works, I almost never install VOLT on new machines. But administrator rights are required, same as for regular installation. And you will need to run VOLT as administrator once (same COM thing).

I would rather figure out why installer doesn't work for Thomas:). Manual copying is one-off thing that can't be done for everybody.

Hin-Tak Leung

Yes, manually registering 9 com servers is going to be quite a pain . The VB6-ness shows - was quite alarmed by the install-shield style uninstall of 1.3 which took over the screen at full screen - haven't seen one such for a while...

The 1.4 installer is an msi installer and different from the 1.3 install shield one... There is probably some options in the msi installer builder which makes its result incompatible with win10?

Hin-Tak Leung

One thing you can try, is to run the installer in 32-mode explicitly, like this, in an administrator privileged cmd shell:

C:\windows\syswow64\msiexec.exe /i  thatmsifile

(the default is 64-bit mode and the msiexec.exe inside system32 instead, I think...)

Thomas Phinney

Nope, that didn't work either.

I am fine running it in my other VM if needed.