[Ham-Mac] fldigi partially drawn?

[Dick Kriss]

First, it was really good news that Ken found and fixed the OS X issue that was preventing fldigi from loading correct on his Mac. Ken's discovery and fix by running the Font Book's RESTORE STANDARD FONTS was a new for me and a good learning experience.  

Based on Ken's success I wondered what, if any, font conflicts were going on in my OS X 10.7.4 setup so I ran the Font Book's RESTORE STANDARD FONTS and was presented with dialog box saying:

"Restoring the standard system font configuration will remove any nonstandard fonts from the database. Proceed?"

The dialog box contained a footnote saying Fonts not included in the Mac OS x system install will be placed in a "Fonts (Remove)" folder next to the Fonts folder.

I clicked on Proceed and like Ken said it was fast and no problem was reported.  I then launched fldigi-3.21.45 it came up with the warning about using variable width fonts. This told me the Restoring Standard Fonts had removed the VeraMono.ttf font I have been using with fldigi for some time and my Mac defaulted Arial variable width as the Rx and Tx font for fldigi.

I then opened my Users Library and found the Fonts (Removed) folder and there was TurboTax Fonts from 2003, some old application specific fonts and the VeraSansMono fixed-width font set I installed for use with fldigi. Because I like it I used the Font Book to replace my VeraMono.ttf and left other stuff in the Fonts (Removed) folder to be trashed.

At this point I figured I needed to find a Mac standard fixed-width font for use for use with fldigi so I opened the Font Book, clicked on the option to display installed Fixed Width fonts and decided to try the Menlo to see how it looked in fldigi.  Bingo, it looked just as good (and maybe better) as the VeraMono I have been using for some time.  I now have selected Menlo Italic - 18 for my fldigi Rx font and Menlo Regular - 18 for my Tx font. Yes, I used the Save Config button after making the fldigi Rx and TX font changes.

Soapbox: The computer industry and software developers cannot seem to get their acts together on fonts. A font that looks good in Microsoft's Outlook, looks like crap when selected for use in Apple's Mail and the same applies the other way.  A font that looks good in W7AY's cocoaModem on a Mac does not look the same when selected for use with fldigi.  Fldigi is hosted on three platforms Windows, Linux and Mac OS X and the fonts do not seem to render the same under the different platforms. Andale renders fine under Windows but is not attractive under OS X. I guess this why developers give users the option to select font and colors. This way we can display our on bad taste for fonts and colors.

Like I said at the beginning K1NEG's discovered OS X font conflict has been a learning experience for me. It  allowed me to clean out some font junk and I now use the OS X standard Menlo fixed-width font that seems to work very nice with fldigi under OS X.

If you are a OS X fldigi user, try the fixed-width Menlo font.  You may like it.

73 Dick AA5VU



On Jun 16, 2012, at 10:53 PM, Ken Winograd wrote:

> Problem solved. With Dick's help (thanks Dick!), I finally tracked the problem down to my having a messed up set of system fonts. I wish I could be more specific on exactly what was wrong (or more specifically how I might have messed up my system fonts in the first place), but I ran Font Book and found an option in its File Menu called RESTORE STANDARD FONTS...I chose it, it asked for permission to do it, I gave my password, it took about a millisecond to say it was done and NO problem was found....yet...when I next ran fldigi, it finally appeared as it should with fonts and menus showing as they should. A mystery still, but a great conclusion.
> 
> On Jun 16, 2012, at 7:31 PM, Dick Kriss wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Jun 16, 2012, at 4:19 PM, Ken Winograd wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi. Wonder if anyone can spot what's wrong here? I have a Mac, running Lion, and I downloaded and installed fldigi 3.21.43 and then the just released 3.21.45, and I end up with fldigi coming up apparently only partially drawn! It seems to be missing much of the text in the windows, and menus, etc. Here's a pic of what I see...
>>> 
>>> http://www.winograd.com/temp/fldigibit.png
>>> 
>>> I imagine it's some oddball setting or preference somewhere or just cockpit error. Hope someone else can see what I've overlooked. Any ideas?
>>> 
>>> Thanks...
>>> 
>>> Ken
>> 
>> Ken Winograd N1NEG
>> 
>> Thanks for the picture. It looks like a bad install or the new is fldigi trying to read an old corrupted .xml file.  If that happened to me I would trash, the application, the .fldigi folder and the .dmg file. I would reboot the Mac, download a fresh copy of fldigi-3.21.45.dmg and start over as a new user.
>> 
>> If you are not interested is doing the above, quite fldigi, open your .fldigi folder and move two files
>> to your desktop.  They are fldigi_def.xml and fldigi.prefs.  Then launch fldigi-3.21.45.app.
>> 
>> It should bring up the Wizard to help you get started. Once you finish with the Wizard, click on Configur/Save Config button. This will write new files to your .fldigi folder. Trash the suspect files moved to our desktop.
>> 
>> Let us know what happens.
>> 
>> 73 Dick AA5VU
>> Running flidgi-3.21.45 on Mac OS X 10.7.4
>> 
>