[Resolved] Mysterious newline character

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Dracos

I just started using Scribus last week.  I'm using it to lay out the rules for my roleplaying game.  Previously I was generating PDFs using mPDF to render HTML source files, but there were always layout issues in the output (which came out to about 106 pages).

Those source files used a certain font that I like called Vinque, which I've used without issue for many years.  Naturally, I wanted to carry that font and the rest of the document style into Scribus.

The issue I'm having with Scribus that it is drawing a mysterious visible character (which looks like a vertical hyphen) at every newline.  It shows up by pressing enter when editing text (in the main window and the Story Editor) or when importing text, with Windows and UNIX line endings.

I've never seen any other software (Photoshop 4.5+, Illustrator 6+, OpenOffice, Inkscape, GIMP, Blender, Firefox, Chromium) do this with this font, and Scribus isn't doing it to any other font.

It's not the "display control characters" setting, I checked that.

Anyone know what could be causing it?  I'm using Scribus 1.4.3 (installed from apt) on Linux Mint 17.0.

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GarryP

The character being displayed in your case seems to be "U-0131 LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I" (glyph 231 in the ttf).
I can't think of any reason why Scribus would be "inserting" this character - if that is indeed what is happening - along with the expected newline.

I sometimes have a similar problem to what you're getting when I try and use some weird for-one-specific-use-only fonts (e.g. fonts that haven't been created for proper typography) but I can't see why you'd be having issues with what seems to be an otherwise well-behaved font.

It could be that your copy of Scribus has somehow misinterpreted the font when it was checking it. One thing you could try would be to refresh your font information. You can do this by closing Scribus, then renaming your checkfonts.xml file to something else, then re-opening Scribus. It may take a while to re-check all of your fonts but it might be an easy fix. (On OSX the file is in "../Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/Scribus/" but I don't know where it is on Linux.) Re-installing the latest version of the font may also do the trick.

I hope some of this helps.

P.S. Sometimes Scribus does some odd things but they can usually be fixed by closing Scribus then re-opening it again. Not great but it usually works.

Kunda

Also update to the latest stable release 1.4.6

Dracos

Quote from: GarryP on January 14, 2016, 02:10:21 PMIt could be that your copy of Scribus has somehow misinterpreted the font when it was checking it.

Regenerating checkfonts.xml didn't solve it.  That file only appears to be tracking the .ttf location along with a timestamp and status flag.

On Linux it's at ~/.scribus/checkfonts.xml

Quote from: Kunda on January 14, 2016, 03:36:33 PM
Also update to the latest stable release 1.4.6

What I have is the latest version in the Ubuntu repository: 1.4.2.dfsg+r18267-1ubuntu2).  The splash screen says 1.4.2 but the window titlebar says 1.4.3.svn.

Kunda

Dracos,

Sorry that it hasn't worked 'right-off-the-bat' for you.
The official Ubuntu repo for Scribus is lagging behind, IIRC it may be because of a missing maintainer.
So here are some options:

  • Try recreating this issue on in the most stable version of Scribus on another computer to see if it's still an issue
  • Same as above but on the same computer using the Ubuntu PPA (https://launchpad.net/~scribus/+archive/ubuntu/ppa) and installing scribus: current which is the current 1.4.x branch
  • Install scribus ng which is development version 1.5 and test you issue.
  • Install the latest trunk v1.5.1 (bleeding edge 'unstable' version) and seeing if the issue persists.

I personally use the latest build of Scribus AKA trunk v1.5.1, which means everytime the devs add code commits I will recompile Scribus to include those commits. It's called 'unstable' but it's actually the best way for me to enjoy all the advances Scribus has made. The devs don't recommend this for regular users but IMO if one is mindful (AKA work on a duplicate file of your orignal so if an major problem occurs you always have the backup to work with). I also submit bugs to the bugtracker and the devs have been pretty on top of fixing things. So you have some choices here.

Dracos

Quote from: Kunda on January 15, 2016, 12:53:58 PM
Dracos,

Sorry that it hasn't worked 'right-off-the-bat' for you.
The official Ubuntu repo for Scribus is lagging behind, IIRC it may be because of a missing maintainer.
So here are some options:

  • Try recreating this issue on in the most stable version of Scribus on another computer to see if it's still an issue
  • Same as above but on the same computer using the Ubuntu PPA (https://launchpad.net/~scribus/+archive/ubuntu/ppa) and installing scribus: current which is the current 1.4.x branch
  • Install scribus ng which is development version 1.5 and test you issue.
  • Install the latest trunk v1.5.1 (bleeding edge 'unstable' version) and seeing if the issue persists.

I personally use the latest build of Scribus AKA trunk v1.5.1, which means everytime the devs add code commits I will recompile Scribus to include those commits. It's called 'unstable' but it's actually the best way for me to enjoy all the advances Scribus has made. The devs don't recommend this for regular users but IMO if one is mindful (AKA work on a duplicate file of your orignal so if an major problem occurs you always have the backup to work with). I also submit bugs to the bugtracker and the devs have been pretty on top of fixing things. So you have some choices here.

Same issue with scribus-ng from PPA on my desktop, and the stable 1.5.0 (from SourceForge) on my Windows 7/x64 laptop.

Dracos

The plot thickens.

Just now I was editing one of my Master Pages, the copyright page.  All the text there is in a text frame, the first line uses Vinque.  I had that open in the story editor, and every time I changed the character style on the first line, I would either get a single quote character, or nothing.  Which surprised me, because one of those character styles doesn't use that font.

utnik

hi dracos

could you provide an affected sample file? (together with the font file...)

utnik

Dracos

Ok, I set up a sample file using Scribus NG from Ubuntu PPA.

Scribus Version: 1.5.0; 19 May 2015; Build ID C-C-T-F-C1.13.1-64bit; using Ghostscript 9.10.

Font is included in the attached zip.

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Kunda

#9
importing that SLA file crashed Scribus for me. Interesting, will submit it to the bugtracker

Edit: link to ticket http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=13683

Dracos

You installed the font first, yes?  Did the backtrace offer any obvious insight?

Kunda

Heads up, as of r20718 it's possible to open this file in 1.5.1svn
Will test OPs bug out later

utnik

hi dracos

i opened your font file in fontForge and found a strange character as u+000d (carriage return). afaik there shouldn't be an outline for this character. in this font it's a dotless 'i'. i removed the glyph in the attached font file.
don't spread this modified font file and be careful when you use it – it worked for me in a short test, but i'm not a font expert...

utnik

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Dracos

Quote from: utnik on January 25, 2016, 04:36:01 PM
hi dracos

i opened your font file in fontForge and found a strange character as u+000d (carriage return). afaik there shouldn't be an outline for this character. in this font it's a dotless 'i'. i removed the glyph in the attached font file.
don't spread this modified font file and be careful when you use it – it worked for me in a short test, but i'm not a font expert...

utnik

I just opened it up in FontForge also.  I see the dotless i glyph where it shouldn't be, several other control characters with outlines (tab, backspace) as well as a list of warnings from FontForge about glyphs mapped to incorrect locations.

I'm no font expert either, but it shouldn't be terribly difficult to fix all these issues.  I'm amazed that Scribus is the first software to actually render these errors.

utnik

yes, i've seen a lot of error messages too – doesn't look like a high quality font file...

utnik