Hi all - or whoever reads this,

I use Scribble some of the time, but I am reluctant to use it often as I find that the "descenders" of a typeface, such as the lower part (below the imaginary base of a standard vowel, - a,e,i,o,u) is not displayed such as a 'g', 'p', 'y', 'j', 'f' or 'q' which often makes it difficult to read clearly.

I have tried to adjust the typeface to Bitstream Vera Sans, and others of the TTF font, and even other older fonts such as CGTriumvirate or CGTimes, they display, but with the same problem as with any other font I have tried.

Is this a known problem with Scribble, or is there a way to resolve this issue?

Your help as always, very much appreciated.

So, has no-one else noticed this problem?

So, does Scribble display OK for everyone else?

I think it is a 'line-spacing' problem, where the text ascender space from the line below is 'covering' the descender space of the line above.

However, there is nowhere in the prefs to change this situation, and if no-one else offers any resolution for it, then I am more than likely 'stuffed' for a something like usable wordprocessor on MorphOS - at this point, as they all seem to have issues that need fixing, even for basic wordprocessing. Some don't do wordwrap properly, have non-standard copying/pasting/cutting text options, or don't have keyboard shortcuts for some tasks I need.

Some are even way too slow at keeping up with even my typing speed.

Hi NewSense,
I loaded a file with Scribble and noticed the same problem. So I decided to change font but Scribble shows always the same typeface changing only the size, if a different one is selected. I deactivated the "use TTengine" option and all become normal, font are well displayed and so are the letters.
I'm agree that MorphOS users need a word processor or something really similar. Ok, I often use Google docs which helps a lot but I would like something native. Without doing any comparison I can say I found Cinnamon Writer really promising though it is in a beta stage and it is not complete and sometimes it crashes.

Don't forget that Scribble is a (programming) text-editor, NOT a word-processor !!

You might want to try "Scriba" for that (which has it's own set of problems).

I've allways used Scribble with the GoldED-font and tt disabled and it did show what it was supposed to show.

Thanks for your replies, and I've tried Scribble without the TT Fonts active, which does show the fonts available with ascenders and descenders properly displayed.

However, if the True Type Font Engine is made available to use in the program you'd have thought the author would have spotted that it wasn't working correctly before releasing it, or not bothered offering it if it causes such problems, but I appreciate all your comments.

I also agree that Scriba has it's own issues as well, which I've mentioned to Carsten, and the same for Cinnamon Writer, also mentioned to its author, but these issues have not, as yet, been addressed.

We need a competent word processor, ideally one that can handle/import colour images, and other graphic capabilitiies for MorphOS sooner rather than later, in fact a proper office suite would do very nicely.

I am managing generally with Wordworth 6 and 7, and Pagestream 4, now that I have got the font issue resolved, but it would be far better, in my opinion, to have a native wordprocessor, rather than a port of a game or two.

Quote:

Hello,

I can confirm that there indeed seems to be an issue with descents in scintilla when ttengine is enabled. I don't think this was the case when I originally implemented the TTEngine support so it probably was introduced at a later stage. I don't use this feature myself so I must have missed it.

I will look into it, but in general we appreciate if such problems are reported through the of morphos bug report system.

Best,

Nicholai

OK. Fixed the bug.

Hi Nadir,

That was quick work, and is there a link to the 'bug' fixed version you've just worked on?

Also, what is the link to the MorphOS bug report system as I don't see it as a link on the "links" page, and I cannot think of where it would be otherwise.

In fact it would be a good idea to have an obvious link on this site to direct users to such a link so information that needs to get back to developers does so directly, rather than a discussion/chat on these forums, though they also do serve a good purpose, I am sure you would agree.

By the way, I should say that Scribble is as far as I am concerned, just about the best tool for wordprocessing on MorphOS, even though it was not intended for this purpose, but it does do true wordwrap, which other word processors for MorphOS only pseudo-comply with, as they make the line force a line feed where it is wrapped, rather than allow the line to continue, and only where there is a true "Return/Send/Enter" command does it force a line feed.

Anyway - THANKS for such a quick update

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Normally you would have to wait for the next version of MorphOS but if you give me your email address I can mail it to you so that you can confirm that it's working.

Quote:

Ambient menu -> About MorphOS -> Support

I know this is not really that obvious to find.

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Thanks. Scribble uses an editor class called Scintilla which is very solid and well designed. Unfortunately it is not really suitable to for a full word processor but what it does, it does well in my opinion.


[ Edited by Nadir 19.10.2013 - 22:08 ]

Quote:

Normally you would have to wait for the next version of MorphOS but if you give me your email address I can mail it to you so that you can confirm that it's working.

Quote:

Ambient menu -> About MorphOS -> Support

I know this is not really that obvious to find.

Quote:

Thanks. Scribble uses an editor class called Scintilla which is very solid and well designed. Unfortunately it is not really suitable to for a full word processor but what it does, it does well in my opinion.


[ Edited by Nadir 19.10.2013 - 22:08 ]

OK, I'll send you a PM with my email address details, and thanks for agreeing to send me the fixed version.

I now know where the bug report button is located, and I'll try not to forget about that, and use it if I spot a bug in any other program that I don't already have a direct contact email for a developer to contact directly.

Yes I'm aware it uses Scintilla, as that is one of the context menus in the program, and the GUI is quite well set out.

I have noticed though that some characters that are standard ASCII seem to be mis-interpreted by Scribble, because when I imported a basic/standard text file they became displayed as some obscure character box, like [], which may mean they were interpreted as a 'Return/Enter/Send' keypress, even though they were only an apostrophe ' or a hyphen - are you aware of this?

[ Edited by NewSense 20.10.2013 - 00:02 ]

Quote:

No, I'm not aware of this. Could you send me an example file?

Once I get the new fixed version of Scribble I will be able to send you a file with suitable data in it for you to be able to examine, as I will then have your email address to do that, but until then I obviously cannot.

I have sent the PM already, so I'm just waiting for a reply from you so I can do as you request.

NewSense,
Quote:

It is not new problem. For example, my message in morphos ML one year ago (September, 24):

Hello,

I found strange behaviour of Scriba. Sometimes, when letter with code
0xE4 is pressed, Scriba types two symbols (see attachment 0xe4.lha), where
last symbol is expected letter.
Also, when I press letter with code 0xE5 (sometimes), Scriba swaps
positions of current and previous lines, and types expected letter as first
in current line. This not happens when I press it in 1st line.
You can see it on video here:
http://peguser.narod.ru/images/SnapShoter_00-18-38.avi .


Video still available, archive... Can not attach it here, but it can be found on Yahoo Groups. Two symbols: 0x0C, 0xE4

Problem is here, when Scribble starts with active russian layout. Whet it starts witn active american layout, it works fine.

[ Edited by mobydick 20.10.2013 - 17:19 ]

The file Neil sent me was not really a standard ASCII file. It was encoded with Windows-1250. For instance, those quotation marks are 0x90 and 0x91 which are empty in amiga bitmap fonts. However, you can actually open the file correctly in Scribble:

1) Enable TTEngine support
2) Use a font that supports these characters
3) In the Scribble open file requester you need to change the encoding type to Windows-1250

However, I just spotted some strange behaviour when you select text in such a file. Looks like some problem measuring the width of those chars. I will look into it.

Hi Nadir,

I just saved the text as a Windows "xxxx.txt" file, so thought it would be standard ASCII, but obviously if you've checked it in more detail then I'd have to accept your findings that it is Windows 1250 standard.

The only problem for people using Scribble now is that you've not, and don't intend releasing the True Type "fix" until the next release of MorphOS, so using the True Type engine still suffers from at least the ascender/descender problem this thread in the forum highlighted, so it's a nuisance to use the True Type engine when it doesn't display the characters fully, in order to have to then change the formatting of the text to Windows 1250, though I appreciate that there is an option to display the text as Windows 1250 encoded, though not without the ascender/descender issue.

I am glad you spotted some strange behaviour with the display of the text, and will be glad to hear back from you when you have found out, and hopefully resolved, the issue with the display of such encoded text.

I should also mention that some of the "hyphens", and the "apostrophes" were displayed correctly in part of the text file that I cut from that text file I sent you, but a good proportion were not displayed correctly, which are the ones I sent you, which was really weird, so please bear that in mnd also.

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Yes, i.e. the normal ASCII apostrophes were correctly displayed but those "open" and "close" apostrophes which are are part of the extended windows mapping do show correctly unless you open the file with windows encoding, using a matching font.