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MacVim + Catalina Font issues #949
Description
Describe the bug
Before installing Catalina, MacVim font looked fantastic when paired with Anonymous Pro (https://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro).
Now however, everything looks very weird, like it's spaced out with extra pixels between each letter.
Here is before installing (I believe this was Mojave when I took this screenshot):
and here is after
Environment (please complete the following information):
- Vim version [e.g. 8.1.1234] (Or paste the result of
vim --version.) latest mvim from homebrew --HEAD - OS: [e.g. Ubuntu 18.04, Windows 10 1809, macOS 10.14] 10.15
- Terminal: [e.g. GNOME Terminal, mintty, iTerm2, tmux, GNU screen] (Use GUI if you use the GUI.) iterm 3
Activity
9mm commentedon Oct 8, 2019
I actually booted up an old computer using Mojave just so I could make sure I wasn't crazy. Here's the exact same MacVim configuration using the same fonts. You can see from NerdTree listing that it's very different
9mm commentedon Oct 8, 2019
I actually loaded it into Photoshop... the pixels actually line up perfectly but they are just a tiny bit less transparent. I assume this isn't a MacVim issue, but some way OSX changed how they render fonts. I really wish I knew what it was because I absolutely hate it. All the fonts look naked and weak
9mm commentedon Oct 8, 2019
Ah! The line-height most definitely DID change though, thats what causes the most disturbing results.. there's so much space between the lines.
I could live with the seemingly "weaker" letters, but the space between the lines is atrocious. I'm not sure how I would go about putting it back though.
eirnym commentedon Oct 8, 2019
on different versions of macOS and in different apps I've used different fonts. This was also caused with different font versions.
Currently I use
Fira Code Lightand previously I've usedAnonymous ProandRobotoand few others.9mm commentedon Oct 8, 2019
I checked the version of Anonymous Pro but it seems to be the same for the last many years. It definitely changed though when upgrading to Catalina, and now I can't restore the old lineheight. :/
eirnym commentedon Oct 9, 2019
Could you test the font in different applications to check if they process it differently?
Lastly MacVim started to honor more font properties on initialization, so it could affect as well.
9mm commentedon Oct 10, 2019
Oh wow... I just re-downloaded release 157 from the releases page and it was fixed (it was probably because i installed with --HEAD because of the other issue with homebrew hash not matching).
So the new changes are definitely crazy on my end. Is that something that is 100% going to be merged into 158 and onwards? If so I will basically stop updating because the font is sadly unusable because it is hideous haha
9mm commentedon Oct 10, 2019
or is there any way to use a new version but keep the old font settings?
eirnym commentedon Oct 10, 2019
Could you explain the difference? Screenshot difference will be the best.
9mm commentedon Oct 10, 2019
You can see it very clearly in the sidebar, it adds so much whitespace between the lines
the second thing it does is very subtly makes the text 'crisper' but it also looks weaker. that is more subtle though and maybe isnt super clear in a photo, i used photoshop to check though. that is less of a big deal as the line height which totally kills my favorite font
BEFORE (GOOD):
AFTER (BAD):
skyksandr commentedon Oct 14, 2019
As a workaround I
set linespace=-1eirnym commentedon Oct 14, 2019
@9mm Thank you for sharing screenshots.
You use modified
Anonymous Profont, and I don't except the external modification will preserve same quality asAnonymous Proitself.I installed the font and tested it:
I'd select 13 which on my screen looks the best if I'd use this font.
Anonymous Pro (original), size 12:
Anonymous Pro (original), size 13:
Fira Code Light (original), size 12:
9mm commentedon Oct 14, 2019
@eirnym the font itself shouldn't have changed with the added powerline symbols. I tested here with both fonts, and you can use photoshop to verify they're identical, so the difference came from macvim/vim (installing old macvim with same powerline font works how it should)
both fonts identical:
here is how it used to be for reference:
@skyksandr thanks... i messed around with linespace and nothing actually changed before, and I just tried again this morning and it works! I probably mixed up set/let. This fixed it, thanks! Crazily enough, I had to do
set linespace=-3to get it back exactly how it waseirnym commentedon Oct 14, 2019
@9mm I've tried a few fonts from that repo (if we speak about the same mod repo), but fonts there in general seems to be very outdated for a few releases at least and some parameters were altered (like linespacing for some fonts). So yes, general symbols might not be changed, but other parameters and symbols might not be the same.
Thus I've found a font with these symbols and which support a few languages I type with support of airline symbols (you see my last screenshot above).
9mm commentedon Oct 14, 2019
Sorry, maybe were not talking about the same thing. I was basically wondering what in macvim/vim changed for my fonts to be so different (it's not related to the 'with powerline' modification of the font because i've used the same font for 5 years or so). You may be correct that it modifies/ruins the font, but I haven't noticed any changes besides what is caused by the
--HEADversion of macvim.With all that said though, the
set linespace=-3thing fixed the issue so I suppose I'm good as long as that continues to work :D I still out of curiosity would be curious to know what changed though, because I see the same linespace problem with the normalAnonymous Prodirectly from the source: https://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-proeirnym commentedon Oct 15, 2019
I use the same build from GitHub (as I used on 10.14) and in my case nothing has been changed. For my font build from the
HEADchanges nothing as well.Underneath MacVim uses
NSTextViewwhich may changed font processing somehow (e.g. use some font parameters not used before or use them differently).eirnym commentedon Oct 15, 2019
Your font looks better with
HEAD(linespacingis still 0) and I hope these changes will be released as soon as possible (see #905 for details)ychin commentedon Oct 17, 2019
The new release should have fixed it. Let me know if it doesn't work and I'll see if there are other reasons why it doesn't look right @9mm.
I think this was basically #928.
9mm commentedon Oct 17, 2019
Thanks it fixed it, and now I removed linespace=-3 👍
eirnym commentedon Oct 17, 2019
Good to hear that!
Fix issue with font line spacing support and add option for it