Fo those of you using Consolas...
Microsoft's version of Consolas displays on the Mac and in TextMate with an incorrect line-height, most clearly exhibited in selected text, highlighted lines, and spelling error underlines. This makes writing in Consolas irritating to me.
The version of Consolas that ships with BBEdit has a correct line height but no italic or bold variations, which also irritates me.
If you extract BBEdit's Consolas from its package contents, install it and disable Microsoft's "regular" weight, Leopard seems to use the correct line-height information from BBEdit's version and apply it to Microsoft's italic and bold weights.
Now Consolas is beautiful.
Sources: http://bandes-storch.net/blog/2008/12/21/consolas-controlled/ http://www.command-tab.com/2008/12/16/consolas-cursor-fix/
You can also do it by hacking the metrics tables in the Microsoft Consolas font. Maybe that also violates license, but fixing an obvious bug ought to be allowed in my book ... See here: http://bandes-storch.net/blog/2008/12/21/consolas-controlled/#comment-2042
On Mar 8, 2009, at 1:14 PM, Sven Axelsson wrote:
You can also do it by hacking the metrics tables in the Microsoft Consolas font. Maybe that also violates license, but fixing an obvious bug ought to be allowed in my book ... See here: http://bandes-storch.net/blog/2008/12/21/consolas-controlled/#comment-2042
What software did you use to edit that font?
Thanks
Gerd
On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Gerd Knops gerti-textmate@bitart.com wrote:
What software did you use to edit that font?
After stumbling through a few random search pages, I discovered that Apple has a suite of command line font editing tools. Well, the tools themselves don't do the editing; rather they extract the truetype data into plain text (xml) tables that you can edit and then 'fuse' back into the font.
Grab the tools here: http://developer.apple.com/FONTS/OSXTools.html
It installs the tools into /usr/bin and the documentation into /Developer/Documentation/FontTools.
I did all this with an uninstalled font outside of the */Library/Fonts directory. OS X is much more robust with font management, but a corrupt font can still really mess stuff up. So continue at your own risk...
Fire up Terminal, and navigate to the folder where you moved the Consolas*.ttf fonts. Now, you want to dump (-A d) the 'hhea' table (-t) into an editable xml file:
ftxdumperfuser -t hhea -A d Consolas.ttf
This creates an xml file in that directory titled Consolas.hhea.xml. Now you can edit the table parameters. And then fuse (-A f) it back into the font:
ftxdumperfuser -t hhea -A f Consolas.ttf
Repeat for each member of the family, and you're done!
It's a pretty cool suite. Emboldened by my success, I decided to modify a few glyphs that had been bugging me. I had previously tried to edit the TTF using the free FontForge... but never had any success recompiling it back into a complete proper font -- it always failed Font Book's validation and often would display gibberish. With the 'glyf' table, you can edit the raw hex that describes the contours of each glyph. So, I edited the glyphs I wanted in FontForge, and exported the TTF. The font file didn't work as a whole, but it still contained all the proper glyf information. I dumped the glyph info, grabbed the one I wanted, subbed it into the dump from the original, and fused it back together. And it worked! Now I have a proper baseline, and a Monaco style 'l' without the lower left serif (and the 'i,' too, for consistency).
Again, probably not kosher... so be careful how you end up using the font. Matt
On Mar 11, 2009, at 4:22 PM, Matt Bauman wrote:
On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Gerd Knops <gerti- textmate@bitart.com> wrote:
What software did you use to edit that font?
After stumbling through a few random search pages, I discovered that Apple has a suite of command line font editing tools.
[..]
Thanks much for the detailed description! I think I still prefer DejaVu in TextMate, but it is always good to have options.
Gerd
On Mar 11, 2009, at 3/11 4:28 PM, Gerd Knops wrote:
On Mar 11, 2009, at 4:22 PM, Matt Bauman wrote:
[...] After stumbling through a few random search pages, I discovered that Apple has a suite of command line font editing tools.
[..] Thanks much for the detailed description! I think I still prefer DejaVu in TextMate, but it is always good to have options.
For those interested, I've whipped up a little script[1] to automate the steps Matt Bauman described so helpfully.
I would definitely recommend copying the offending files into a scratch directory before invoking the script (which, when called with no arguments, will iterate through every .ttf file in the current directory).
It does not automate the installation into Font Book, but installing is as simple as `open *.ttf` (after you've disabled/uninstalled the previous version).
[1]: http://gist.github.com/79238
~ Daniel
On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 5:37 PM, Daniel Stockman daniel.stockman@gmail.com wrote:
For those interested, I've whipped up a little script[1] to automate the steps Matt Bauman described so helpfully.
Thank you Daniel. This is a great solution.
--oliver
Thanks!Nice idea to have a script. One problem though is that this script doesn't like 'space' in font name. Anyway after rename font file from 'Consolas Bold.ttf' to 'Consolas-b.ttf' it works just fine.
-- Alexey
On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 03:37, Daniel Stockman daniel.stockman@gmail.comwrote:
On Mar 11, 2009, at 3/11 4:28 PM, Gerd Knops wrote:
On Mar 11, 2009, at 4:22 PM, Matt Bauman wrote:
[...] After stumbling through a few random search pages, I discovered that Apple has a suite of command line font editing tools.
[..] Thanks much for the detailed description! I think I still prefer DejaVu in TextMate, but it is always good to have options.
For those interested, I've whipped up a little script[1] to automate the steps Matt Bauman described so helpfully.
I would definitely recommend copying the offending files into a scratch directory before invoking the script (which, when called with no arguments, will iterate through every .ttf file in the current directory).
It does not automate the installation into Font Book, but installing is as simple as `open *.ttf` (after you've disabled/uninstalled the previous version).
~ Daniel
textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate
On Mar 16, 2009, at 3/16 7:13 AM, Alexey Blinov wrote:
One problem though is that this script doesn't like 'space' in font name. Anyway after rename font file from 'Consolas Bold.ttf' to 'Consolas- b.ttf' it works just fine.
Oops, chalk one up for the shell script newbie. My test files were all the original Windows names, "CONSOLA.TTF" etc. And boy, mucking around for 15 minutes and I already hate spaces in filenames. Sorry about that.
~ Daniel
One problem though is that this script doesn't like 'space' in font name. Anyway after rename font file from 'Consolas Bold.ttf' to 'Consolas- b.ttf' it works just fine.
Oops, chalk one up for the shell script newbie. My test files were all the original Windows names, "CONSOLA.TTF" etc. And boy, mucking around for 15 minutes and I already hate spaces in filenames. Sorry about that.
Persistence pays off, got cozy with the IFS variable and all seems to be well. Thanks again for the tip, Alexey.
~ Daniel
No problem mate ;)And thanks again!
-- Alexey
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 18:14, Daniel Stockman daniel.stockman@gmail.comwrote:
One problem though is that this script doesn't like 'space' in font name. Anyway after rename font file from 'Consolas Bold.ttf' to 'Consolas- b.ttf' it works just fine.
Oops, chalk one up for the shell script newbie. My test files were all the original Windows names, "CONSOLA.TTF" etc. And boy, mucking around for 15 minutes and I already hate spaces in filenames. Sorry about that.
Persistence pays off, got cozy with the IFS variable and all seems to be well. Thanks again for the tip, Alexey.
~ Daniel
textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate
On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 10:48 AM, Walter Lee Davis waltd@wdstudio.comwrote:
I'm pretty sure this violates the terms of BBEdit's license. You might want to check.
Walter
On Mar 7, 2009, at 2:21 PM, Oliver Taylor wrote:
If you extract BBEdit's Consolas from its package contents,
I would imagine if you have the right to use Consolas, then the origin doesn't really matter.
I understand that's how you might interpret the "spirit" of the license, but the terms appear fairly non-ambiguous to me:
http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/arch_bbedit91.html
(scroll down to right under the Additions header)
BBEdit now includes a copy of Consolas Regular, an excellent antialiased code editing font. This font is licensed from Ascender Corporation for use only with BBEdit.
It all hinges on the interpretation of the word "with".
If that means "BBEdit is paid for and installed, but not necessarily running at the moment" then fine, I agree, you can go to it and good luck.
If it means "may access and use from within a running copy of BBEdit", then that's a different kettle of fish entirely.
Walter
On Mar 8, 2009, at 9:56 PM, Neil wrote:
On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 10:48 AM, Walter Lee Davis waltd@wdstudio.com wrote: I'm pretty sure this violates the terms of BBEdit's license. You might want to check.
Walter
On Mar 7, 2009, at 2:21 PM, Oliver Taylor wrote:
If you extract BBEdit's Consolas from its package contents,
I would imagine if you have the right to use Consolas, then the origin doesn't really matter.
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