Sublime Forum

Bold & italic not working with Droid Sans Mono

#1

I have noticed that bold and italic styles are ignored for certain fonts. After reading various bits and pieces about how Sublime handles fonts, I am still confused. I would like to use Droid Sans Mono but when I switch to it, the bold and italic styles which worked fine with Consolas, Meslo, etc, are ignored. Any ideas?

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Font display issue with Meslo LG
#2

Does Droid Sans Mono have bold and italic typefaces?

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#3

I thought I knew the answer to this question to be yes, but Iā€™m less sure know. Droid Sans Mono comes in a single .ttf file but all applications except ST can output bold & italic. Does this mean that whatever Linux uses for font rendering does this on the fly?

Edit: Yes that seems to be the case. Droid Sans Mono does not provide bold and italic.

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#4

[quote=ā€œquodlibetā€]I thought I knew the answer to this question to be yes, but Iā€™m less sure know. Droid Sans Mono comes in a single .ttf file but all applications except ST can output bold & italic. Does this mean that whatever Linux uses for font rendering does this on the fly?

Edit: Yes that seems to be the case. Droid Sans Mono does not provide bold and italic.[/quote]

Itā€™s possible to ā€œconvertā€ a plain typeface to a slanted one or to a thicker one, but to purists, neither is acceptable. Only a properly designed italic or bold typeface will do.

That is, applications that output bold & italic from a font family that doesnā€™t include them are faking it. The fake may look reasonable, but it doesnā€™t reflect the esthetics of the underlying typeface. That may be acceptable for some uses, including, perhaps, displaying text in an editor.

Hmm, is there a hint of disapproval in what Iā€™ve just said?

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#5

Yes, there is :smile:

I actually understand a sufficient amount about typography to balk at faked weight and styles, so I wouldnā€™t want to go down this road even if it was available. I just wasnā€™t being attentive.

Itā€™s a typographic concern that led me to this trouble in the first place. I was looking for a monospace typeface with a Greek that works well for long texts. I do all my writing in text editors, Sublime most recently, and the Greek glyphs of most monospace faces seem to me to be derived from math symbols rather than written letters.

Iā€™ve been switching between Consolas and Meslo but I have various niggles with both of these. Oh, well.

I rather like the Greek of Droid, so Iā€™ll stick to it; it may turn out that the absence of bold & italic is less of a deal breaker than I think it is.

Unless anyone has a monospace font with excellent Greek to suggestā€¦

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#6

Out of curiosity, is one of the problems you see with Meslo the left indentation (or tab stops)? I indent with two spaces as my tabs (no tabs allowed) and I find that the left side of my text does not line up with the guidelines that are shown at the proper two space indentation. Very strange.

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#7

[quote=ā€œSeanWcomā€]
Out of curiosity, is one of the problems you see with Meslo the left indentation (or tab stops)? I indent with two spaces as my tabs (no tabs allowed) and I find that the left side of my text does not line up with the guidelines that are shown at the proper two space indentation. Very strange.[/quote]

My issue with Consolas and Meslo is that their Greek glyphs are too quirky or decorative, respectively. Nothing to do with sublime, Iā€™m afraid.

On the other hand, your description seems to indicate that Sublime doesnā€™t render Meslo properly. I had a look at Meslo indented by two spaces and I donā€™t see any problems; but perhaps I donā€™t understand what you are referring to. Can you provide a screenshot?

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#8

Sure - Iā€™ll do one better. Hereā€™s a quick screencast. You may have to pause to read my textā€¦ Jing only allows a few minutes in the free client. :smile:

screencast.com/t/j2lLIt9us

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#9

I see what you mean, but I canā€™t replicate the behavior on Ubuntu, ST build 2190.

Meslo LG M DZ at size 9 looks just fine:

http://i.minus.com/jVPTKAx83GN6C.png

I donā€™t have any other operating systems lying around at the moment, but I can try it out on a Windows computer tomorrow.

In the meantime, have you tried reverting (http://www.sublimetext.com/docs/2/revert.html)? This will let you know if any plugins are causing this.

P.S. I laughed when Sublime auto-paired your sad smiley at the end :smile:

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#10

Haha, yeah the autocomplete smily is funny. :smile:

I just reverted to test things out and the same problem is there. This is far from a deal killer for me. There are lots of good programming fonts out there. :smile: I just wanted to bring it up in case it did turn out to be a Sublime issue.

Your screenshot makes me want to build up an Ubuntu partition - something about the font rendering makes me a happy coder. lolā€¦

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#11

Unfortunately I canā€™t verify your issue on XP, either:

http://i.minus.com/jmvQ6h3BKDBfH.png

The other thing Iā€™d try (in the ā€œturn it off and on againā€ vein of troubleshooting) would be to remove Meslo, download it again from github.com/andreberg/Meslo-Font and re-install it. The reason I mention this bit of paranoia is that I seem to recall there were various forks of Meslo floating around at some point and maybe youā€™re using one them?

It may also make sense to start a fresh thread. As my issue was resolved a few posts up, there may not be enough eyes reading all the way through.

As for Windowsā€™ font rendering, yes, it stinks. As a habitual typophile and occasional web designer, it drives me up the wall. One thing that almost always improves even poorly rendered fonts is white space, I donā€™t know how I used to live before sublime added the line_padding options.

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#12

Actually, it does look like itā€™s messed up in your screenshot. Notice the quote mark on ā€œsadā€ doesnā€™t appear to be two spaces from that guideline? Do some more indenting and see what it looks like. Hereā€™s an image to check out as well:

http://i.minus.com/ikstWr8X0VMCP.JPG

On the left, size 10. On the right, size 9 (and I added some padding after seeing your screenshots). :smile: You can really see how the guidelines slowly shift (or rather the text does) the more you indent. I think that is happening in your XP screenshot.

I was thinking that it must be a font issue at that size in Windows (rather than an ST2 display problem), but I downloaded Notepad++ to see if I could recreate the issue, and it displays fine thereā€¦ (booo)

Iā€™ll create a new thread and see if others have ideas. Thanks for your help in testing! :smile:

UPDATE: I created that new thread, so we can move any other conversation about it over here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6957

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