I first noticed that one of my fonts (Helvetica) was not being bolded the way it should be because when I saw the same font on another users RM his bold seemed darker. I couldn't fix the problem so I ignored it.
I later changed the font from Helvetica to another font which I liked better. This is an example of that font with a string style of bold:
It looks fine. However when I exit RM and reopen it this is what the font looks like after
It may not be noticeable to some but to me there's an obvious difference. I cannot figure out why RM is doing this but the bold in the second image is clearly weaker than in the first. And it's not that RM is unbolding the font because when I change the string style to "Normal" it looks even lighter. Is there a reason for this? I don't know how to fix it.
Edit: Well there is a temporary fix. If I uninstall and then reinstall that font it will go back to the stronger bold but if I exit RM it will again go back to the weaker bold.
Edit #2: Even stranger, the memory usage on my RM seems to be increasing at a pretty fast rate. Its usually sitting around 20-24 K and it's basically doubled that.
If you would like to test it for yourself, try a few different fonts with a normal string style and bold as well. This is another example of the initial problem I was having with the Helvetica font.
This is how Helvetica should look when bolded:
However on my computer it shows up as this:
It's not as apparent as the first example but it's still a weaker bold than it should be. I've had no luck in trying to fix this one, uninstalling and reinstalling Helvetica did not work.
I'm thinking I should try a fresh install of RM and delete all current skins (make backups of some) and see if that has any effect, not sure that it will though.
taxstin wrote:I'm thinking I should try a fresh install of RM and delete all current skins (make backups of some) and see if that has any effect, not sure that it will though.
That will not help.
I suspect this may be due to the antialiasing we do. We've discussed about adding support for hinting and this will probably be added for next Sunday.
In the meantime, could you send me the required files (the font and the skin) via a PM so I can confirm that using hinting fixes this.
I suspect this may be due to the antialiasing we do. We've discussed about adding support for hinting and this will probably be added for next Sunday.
In the meantime, could you send me the required files (the font and the skin) via a PM so I can confirm that using hinting fixes this.
I don't know if it would be a good idea to send the modified version of the above skin since I don't have the rights to edit his work and distribute it anywhere but the skin in the link I posted above is basically the foundation of it and the results should still be the same. All you would have to do is edit the font to either Helvetica or the one below, set the string style to bold, and then determine whether it's actually bolded the way it should be.
The font in my original post can be downloaded here:
[Rainmeter]
BackgroundMode=2
SolidColor=0,0,0,128
[Null]
Meter=String
Text=The quick brown fox makes for a really tasty stew.
FontFace=YYSHSans NTBSC
FontColor=ffffff
FontSize=15
StringStyle=BOLD
AntiAlias=1
X=15
Y=15
W=500
H=40
Appearance on first Rainmeter run after installing (or reinstalling) the font:
Appearance after quitting and restarting Rainmeter:
I do not get the memory leak, however. I suspect that's a separate issue.
Hm very interesting. Is it possible only this font is the issue? I really like the font so I would hate to ditch it.
Something even more interesting. When I reinstall the font and start up rainmeter, it will be bolded properly but my memory usage for RM will immediately start out at 38k and creep up to 50k. If I exit RM and reopen it, the font will go to the weaker bold and my memory usage for RM will start out at around 13k and peak at around 20k. I can't conclude that the two issues are related but this is very strange.
