Tdesktop: ~ is gone

[JochemKuijpers]

With the latest update, the tilde (the wavy character) is gone.
It has been replaced by a dash?

[telegramdesktop]

It is some strange font issue. I don't know for now, why Open Sans is drawing ~ in such strange way.. It is still tilde (if you copy it and paste somewhere with other font), but it looks weird.

[Bullsquid]

This one bothers me a lot. I like using ~ character.

[auchri]

Maybe try another font: https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Source+Sans+Pro

[JochemKuijpers]

Maybe let us choose between system fonts and Open Sans?

Customization is nice anyway.

[jkantr]

This is really starting to drive me nuts. Actually what bothers me most is how Open Sans can have such a bizarre drawing issue, it's been so good to me in the past.

[JochemKuijpers]

I'm guessing it's the font hinting which does this. (= deforming characters so they are drawn more readable with small font sizes).

I'm used to use the tilde when guessing/approximating numbers. Now it looks like I'm approximating that there are about minus 40 people in the same bus as me, or whatever I want to write. I always have to clarify to desktop users that it's a tilde.

Please fix this

[drasive]

+1

[Matheus28]

+1

[JochemKuijpers]

I'm still waiting for this relatively easy fix -- just replace the font with a font that actually displays the characters correctly or allow us to choose our own fonts.

[Clindbergh]

+1

[obskyr]

I really like Open Sans, and would like it to stay. However, I also like using ~, and it rendering as a dash is a problem. I did some research, check it:

What this means is that the tilde hinting breaks at 12.5px to 13px (since 12.5px rounds vertically up to 13px [?] - also sizes 10px and below, but that's hardly relevant). Changing the font size up (to 13.5 px, perhaps) or down one pixel would fix the issue, which is what I propose.

[phi1010]

Changing the font size could fail on Windows8, because sizes aren't only measured in pixels anymore, see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2900023. A font selection dialog to allow changing both font and size would probably be more helpful.

[thybak]

Hi guys!

Do you know if this is going to be 'solved'? It would be helpful adding an option to select the font _and size_ We want, don't you think so?

It's annoying seeing wrongly the ~ character :[

[LeoDJ]

Will there be a public patch? It bothers the hell out of me...

[ralesk]

Suspecting FreeType issue https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?23537 which hasn't been worked on since 2008. As mentioned in #950, I poked at the bug listing yesterday, maybe it'll finally stir up the FT developers.

[Larusek]

I'm really dissapointed. Over a year of development and such an easy bug is still unresolved. If the font is at fault, why don't you just add custom font selection or at least font size.

Any news about it ?

[ralesk]

There seem to be quite a few fairly trivial issues that nobody cares about :/
I wouldn't say the tilde one is one of them. Some fonts/sizes help, but that's walking around the problem and not actually fixing them. The ball is in FreeType's court, and they haven't bothered with it for years.

[telegramdesktop]

@Larusek It is not trivial in case of tdesktop, cause it is quite a complicated thing to make font size larger for one character only, it is not HTML :)

[Bullsquid]

@telegramdesktop would it hurt to change font type / font size entirely?

[telegramdesktop]

@Bullsquid Yes, that is not an option. I really hoped that Google will fix their font one day, but it seems that the ugly solution with one-letter-font-size will be required.

[ralesk]

As much as I like the idea of the app having its own theme and trying to stick to it (and I understand that you don't like that people want to, well, "ruin" the UX :D), sometimes it may be better to allow the user to choose a font (and that's certainly not impossible with Qt), or to let them use the system font. It's a matter of accessibility sometimes (certain fonts are easier to read for some people, for example).

[telegramdesktop]

@ralesk Well, right now at least three fonts that stick to each other should be provided at once (regular, semibold and bold), good fitting semibold font is quite a rare thing.

[ralesk]

I didn't notice you guys use three weights. In most cases, two seems to be enough (might be a personal taste, I avoid light fonts, they aren't fun to read; though I do have good vision).

[telegramdesktop]

@ralesk Regular is used everywhere for the text, semibold is used everywhere for names (in conversations list, in messages), because bold is too heavy, bold is used almost nowhere, but still exists.

[ralesk]

Ah, okay :)

It does seem like the strength of whatever they call the bold variant depends a lot on the font itself and usually (but not always), the plain bold one isn't too thick.

[auchri]

Fixed with 0.9.10

[obskyr]

Closed why? Because it's a problem with Open Sans? So no chance of a workaround or font change, huh?

[telegramdesktop]

@obskyr Fixed in 0.9.10 version in almost all places (except Search field and maybe some other forgotten places).

[obskyr]

Terribly sorry, somehow managed to miss the "fixed" message. I'm definitely happy to see the ~ saga come to an end. So how did it end up being fixed?

[telegramdesktop]

@obskyr All tildes are found in messages and other texts + in text input fields (like emojis) and the font is converted to Semibold (like names in the conversations dialog) just for those symbols.

[Bullsquid]

Glad to see this one closed but sadly the fix opens another issue. #1263

[auchri]

-> https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/399

[ralesk]

Holy moly, the actual bug is being worked on, after so many years: https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?23537