Possible bug: Different text style when local characters are used (1 Viewer)

[Zvex]

Hi,

I noticed strange behaviour with fonts when local characters (in my case Croatian) are used in text. This is most noticeable in program guide. If you look closely in attached picture, whenever Croatian local characters are used in text, such as č, Č, ć, Ć, š, Š, đ, Đ, ž and Ž, fonts looks little thinner then without them. In first screenshot on bottom you can see difference between lines with and without local characters.

This behaviour is visible in all parts of MediaPortal (TV guide, Videos, Music) - see other screenshot.
I have clean installation of Win7 on my HTPC (only MP is installed) and I’ve noticed same behaviour on all my previous installations (WinXP, Vista) and all previous versions of MP.

Also this happens with all skins - even if the skin uses proprietary font (like mayatype for Maya skin) whenever local character appear in text, style for this line of text is changed.

I didn’t resize screenshots so you can notice difference easily.

Can anyone confirm this? Is this a possible bug?

 

[SilentException]

There are two hacks to fix this for now:

1. If you use "English" language (check in configuration):

Edit strings_en.xml in config folder, set characters="512"
(Edit strings_en-US.xml or strings_en-GB.xml if you're one of those languages)

2. Edit MediaPortal.xml in config folder and add this under <section name="debug">:
<entry name="useExtendedCharsWithStandardCulture">yes</entry>
which forces 1536 characters.

Afterwards, delete skin cache (cache folder in configuration folder).

Keep in mind that by using first approach, skin cache will be "lighter" but you're loosing the setting on each install. Second approach will be using more cache (more memory) but you'll keep the setting on reinstall.

In 1.2 it will be better, you will be able to set number of characters directly in useExtendedCharsWithStandardCulture setting

 

[Zvex]

There are two hacks to fix this for now:

1. If you use "English" language (check in configuration):

Edit strings_en.xml in config folder, set characters="512"
(Edit strings_en-US.xml or strings_en-GB.xml if you're one of those languages)

2. Edit MediaPortal.xml in config folder and add this under <section name="debug">:
<entry name="useExtendedCharsWithStandardCulture">yes</entry>
which forces 1536 characters.

Afterwards, delete skin cache (cache folder in configuration folder).

Keep in mind that by using first approach, skin cache will be "lighter" but you're loosing the setting on each install. Second approach will be using more cache (more memory) but you'll keep the setting on reinstall.

In 1.2 it will be better, you will be able to set number of characters directly in useExtendedCharsWithStandardCulture setting

Great! Many thanks...

I've solved this with 1st hack. It also fixed this problem with Maya skin.

How it will be fixed this in 1.2 version? Through some menu options or automatically?

 

[SilentException]

It's not going to be "fixed" (as there is nothing to fix, you should be using Croatian language - that has 512 characters in the string file)

In 1.2 you will able to set:

<entry name="useExtendedCharsWithStandardCulture">512</entry> (greater control over number of characters, instead just yes/no)

 

[catavolt]

AW: Possible bug: Different text style when local characters are used

This is also due to fonts used in different skins do not support the extended alphabet with e.g. the characters you describe. Therefore a standard font which supports those characters is used instead, which leads to the font differences seen in your screenshots.

 

[Jay_UK]

Hi there,

Could this be the same issue I see within MovingPictures with film descriptions?

When the film description text scrolls up the screen, everso often a line will look like its in bold in relation to the lines above and below? (might be the other way around, but the odd line is definately different to the other lines)

Thanks,

J.

 

[pilehave]

I have a similar issue, but with Danish, and not really with special characters, just "regular" characters like endash (–), emdash (—), quoteleft and quoteright...and a few others

See attached screenshots. Language is set to danish, I tried both hacks here, but since danish uses 255 characters just like english and english-US, I don't think it makes any difference.

The text is from OnlineVideos, which grabs its text from the web (in my own case from a JSON file). Even Unicode fonts displays this issue.

Currently I'm on SVN versions, but this has been an issue as far back I can remember.

I also get this issue in the EPG that I get from DVB-T. Danish characters like æ,ø and å displays fine.