freeze when font selection

[Leigh]

On 1/8/2020 at 12:26 PM, ssystem said:

@Leigh  

I've already tested it by creating a new account. But the problem is not solved.

Thanks for trying @ssystem and it's sad to learn that it didn't make any difference, sorry.

I completely understand your frustration with our app and that you want to spend some time getting work done but if you have any spare time in the future it would be interesting to know if you get the same issue if you change the default language of Windows to English. I'm also tagging our @Affinity QA team for them to have a fresh look over this thread to see if they have any other ideas or suggestions as I can see you reported this issue with the 1.7 beta too.

[lbnkorea]

@Leigh
I am on trial for this program and I plan to purchase it.
I'm afraid I won't be able to purchase this program because of font problem.

I'm using 1.8xx version and have same problem now.

I tested 2 computer and got same freezing error.

Is ther any progress on this issue?

 

[Leigh]

On 5/5/2020 at 4:41 PM, lbnkorea said:

@Leigh
I am on trial for this program and I plan to purchase it.
I'm afraid I won't be able to purchase this program because of font problem.

I'm using 1.8xx version and have same problem now.

I tested 2 computer and got same freezing error.

Is ther any progress on this issue?

 

Unfortunately, i've not been able to replicate this issue when using the same fonts. I will check with our QA/Developers to see if they have any further suggestions. I'll keep you updated.

[thomaso]

Just a guess: In the initial post seems to be quite a large number of fonts in the available font list, according to its slider size for scrolling.

Also a user reported the scrolling speed to be involved in the issue:

On 12/2/2019 at 1:08 AM, ekwkosox said:

It does not freeze if i scroll slowly using arrow key. if i scroll faster using mouse wheel, It freezs.

It makes me wonder if this parameters influence the delay of the UI feedback in Affinity? So, to detect or limit a possible reason for the freeze it might be worth to give it a try to...
– reduce the total number of fonts (e.g. to the systems minimum).
– reduce the Affinity font list from "All" in the character panel to a collection (e.g. "English") or in the toolbar menu to e.g. "Favorites" or "Recent".

 

Also I wonder if there is any hidden way to deactivate the font previews (*) in the Affinity font menus. I assume those get rendered not on application launch but when the menu gets opened + scrolled (compare above: 'scroll slowly'). – (*) as in the Text Styles Panel with "Show Samples".

Does the freeze only occur when the menu is used – or even if a font gets selected by typing its name in the font family text field, without unfolding the menu at all? If that works without harm then the issue might become limited to the list view and its demanding rendering, e.g. for its previews.

[Leigh]

On 5/5/2020 at 4:41 PM, lbnkorea said:

@Leigh
I am on trial for this program and I plan to purchase it.
I'm afraid I won't be able to purchase this program because of font problem.

I'm using 1.8xx version and have same problem now.

I tested 2 computer and got same freezing error.

Is ther any progress on this issue?

 

@lbnkorea If you have 1.8.3 installed can you try the following: Press the Windows Key + R on your keyboard to open the Run dialog and then type CMD and press Enter. This will launch Command Prompt.

*Presuming you have the app installed in the default location, type in cd "C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo\" and press Enter. Now type Photo --disable-font-preview-cache and press Enter - the app will now launch.

Do you still have the same issue?

[ashf]

I suppose changing the font of selected text by just hovering cursor on the font list cause the problem.

[Leigh]

On 5/25/2020 at 5:27 AM, ashf said:

I suppose changing the font of selected text by just hovering cursor on the font list cause the problem.

Can you try the steps mentioned in my previous post to see if that improves things? Are you using a trial or purchased version?

[ashf]

8 hours ago, Leigh said:

Can you try the steps mentioned in my previous post to see if that improves things? Are you using a trial or purchased version?

Ok, it seems that there's no lag without preview.
I'm using Serif Store version.

My guess is that the cause is not font preview on the font list but selected text.

[thomaso]

7 minutes ago, ashf said:

My guess is that the cause is not font preview on the font list but selected text.

Does it mean if an empty text frame or no object at all is selected you don't experience the lag in the font list even with active font preview?

[ashf]

1 minute ago, thomaso said:

Does it mean if an empty text frame or no object at all is selected you don't experience the lag in the font list even with active font preview?

I just tried without selecting text but still there's lag, sorry.
 

[Leigh]

13 hours ago, ashf said:

I just tried without selecting text but still there's lag, sorry.
 

Thanks for trying. Can you now try the latest beta build to see if that improves things? They have some fixes/improvements related to fonts.

[ashf]

5 minutes ago, Leigh said:

Thanks for trying. Can you now try the latest beta build to see if that improves things? They have some fixes/improvements related to fonts.

It seems that the beta is better than 1.8.3 but there's still some lag that looks like frozen.

[Leigh]

On 5/27/2020 at 10:41 AM, ashf said:

It seems that the beta is better than 1.8.3 but there's still some lag that looks like frozen.

Thanks for replying and trying. Can you try the following with the 1.8.4 beta? Press the Windows Key + R on your keyboard to open the Run dialog and then type CMD and press Enter. This will launch Command Prompt.

Presuming you have the app installed in the default location, type in cd "C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo Customer Beta\" and press Enter. Now type Photo --font-cache-logging and press Enter - the app will now launch.

After launching the app and trying the fonts again, please send me the log.txt from %appdata%\Affinity\Photo\1.0 (Beta)\

[ashf]

Here's the log from the Photo beta.

Log.txt

[Leigh]

15 hours ago, ashf said:

Here's the log from the Photo beta.

Log.txt 228.98 kB · 1 download

Thank you - much appreciated. Can you also check to see if you have any crash reports in %AppData%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\CrashReports - if you do, please attach them here too.

[ashf]

Report from 1.0 but 1.0 beta?
Both of them don't have recent report.
Latest one is older than few weeks.

[Leigh]

Can you upload that last crash report listed? I will get out developers to see if it has any useful information in it.

Thanks again for checking.

[ashf]

Here you are.

f42efa98-0876-4fcd-9144-bd1e637e25e0.dmp

[Leigh]

On 6/5/2020 at 7:16 AM, ashf said:

Here you are.

f42efa98-0876-4fcd-9144-bd1e637e25e0.dmp 1.91 MB · 1 download

Thank you. Will pass to the developers to see if it's related. Will keep you updated.

[Leigh]

Unfortunately, the .dmp file isn't related to your fonts issue. Is it possible to send me a copy of your fonts? This will allow me to try and replicate the issue at my end. I can provide a Dropbox link if needed - just let me know.

[FlorianHarms]

Good evening team.

I really like your software products, have bought Photo, Designer and Publisher to test the apps for our company (and its a big company!). It shall takeover the Adobe Design Products. And I was really surprised i.e. how good Photo is. So, congrats, this one got in our "software license to buy" list. Designer is near to that, but Publisher can't be taken in it on current conditions. Designer needs to be checked if that nasty font problem is also valid here.

My Test setup: Windows 10, 32gig ram, NVIDIA 1080, 300+ installed fonts, mainly payware. Adobe is working without problems, also the other apps run without error.

In Publicher at least, the font problem is still alive. If I open your Gemini Brochure template and move into the Paragraph list to select another font for the selected paragraph style, the app freezes and needs to be killed via the Task manager. On this status, the task manager reports approx. 780MB for Affinity Publisher and the Gemini project. If I select a text content element and select the font via the main window, everything works fine. Unfortunately, the possibility to work with paragraph and text styles is essential for all productions on corporation side. 

I have enclosed a snapshot from the frozen publisher window plus the crash report. 

Let me emphase it once more: your software is great, but on this condition i can't give the "green" for publisher. If you need more information, don't hesitate in contacting me directly via my email.

Best regards

Florian

CrashReports.zip

[Leigh]

On 7/7/2020 at 7:46 PM, FlorianHarms said:

Good evening team.

I really like your software products, have bought Photo, Designer and Publisher to test the apps for our company (and its a big company!). It shall takeover the Adobe Design Products. And I was really surprised i.e. how good Photo is. So, congrats, this one got in our "software license to buy" list. Designer is near to that, but Publisher can't be taken in it on current conditions. Designer needs to be checked if that nasty font problem is also valid here.

My Test setup: Windows 10, 32gig ram, NVIDIA 1080, 300+ installed fonts, mainly payware. Adobe is working without problems, also the other apps run without error.

In Publicher at least, the font problem is still alive. If I open your Gemini Brochure template and move into the Paragraph list to select another font for the selected paragraph style, the app freezes and needs to be killed via the Task manager. On this status, the task manager reports approx. 780MB for Affinity Publisher and the Gemini project. If I select a text content element and select the font via the main window, everything works fine. Unfortunately, the possibility to work with paragraph and text styles is essential for all productions on corporation side. 

I have enclosed a snapshot from the frozen publisher window plus the crash report. 

Let me emphase it once more: your software is great, but on this condition i can't give the "green" for publisher. If you need more information, don't hesitate in contacting me directly via my email.

Best regards

Florian

CrashReports.zip 1.56 MB · 0 downloads

I can see that you've also posted this issue in the bugs section too. I would suggest that you continue to work with Gabe in your thread here to see if he can help you resolve your issue :)

[ssystem]

 

The bug is obviously a font preview cache issue.

 

Freezing can be avoided by deleting every fonts that does not display "preview" in the font selection pop-up window.

In my case, Segoe MDL2 Assets, HoloLens MDL2 Assets fonts were the cause of the problem.

After forcibly deleting these fonts from Windows for testing, freezing no longer occurred.

 

However, these fonts are the default fonts of Windows 10 that are automatically installed after formatting.

Therefore, I can't delete the Windows default fonts, because I don't know where the problem will occur.

 

In addition to the default Windows fonts, some other fonts are not previewed in the same way and cause freezing.

So I'm using the "--disable-font-preview-cache" option to turn off the preview. Then I can use Affinity Photo without problems. However, I feel uncomfortable.

The bug is reproduced the same in version 1.8.5.

 

I believe you will surely fix this bug in the next update. If users have been enthusiastic about bug reporting, I think it must be fixed.

 

[FlorianHarms]

Yep, i can confirm this.

After getting rid of a Arial Rounded, the program seem to work. Not tested in full depth, but it really looks good.

Maybe the release development could add a font scan to the installation process to get either a warning for users or (more elegant) setup a black list of fonts not working...

Thank you.

Florian

[ssystem]

1 hour ago, FlorianHarms said:

Yep, i can confirm this.

After getting rid of a Arial Rounded, the program seem to work. Not tested in full depth, but it really looks good.

Maybe the release development could add a font scan to the installation process to get either a warning for users or (more elegant) setup a black list of fonts not working...

Thank you.

Florian

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/troubleshoot-fonts-photoshop.html

That's a good opinion. Adobe already offers a similar method.

They have detailed solutions to font compatibility issues on their help page. It even provides a script to search for problem fonts.

 

Affinity is getting a notification when a new font is installed.

After scanning for fonts,  Affinity should provide an option to force preview off only for fonts with compatibility issues.

Exception handling is the basis of a program.