Subject: Re: [Witch Talk] Condensed character spacing

From: Rob Griffiths <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 06:41:09 -0700

On Oct 19, 2016, at 7:09 PM, Allen Adams <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Any ETA on an update? In the meantime, any chance you might be aware of what other fonts happen to play well with Witch?

We've actually made all the changes we can, as of Witch 3.9.9. Are you running OS X 10.10 by chance? If not, which version are you on? Also, what's your font setting in Witch's "Appearance" tab? If it's not "Default," does changing the font to "Default" help? This should pretty much solve the problem on San-Francisco-using systems (10.11 and newer). On macOS 10.10, if Helvetiaa Neue is still too tight for your tastes, the only advice I can give is try some fonts and look for one that isn't affected.

As much as we'd love to perfectly fix this, we can't, given what Apple changed in the font kerning in the new SDK we need to use.

regards,
-rob.

---

From: Allen Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 19:09:45 -0700 (PDT)

Any ETA on an update? In the meantime, any chance you might be aware of 
what other fonts happen to play well with Witch?

On Monday, August 8, 2016 at 11:30:36 PM UTC-5, Many Tricks wrote:
>
> On Aug 8, 2016, at 8:43 PM, Greg Fulco <[email-masked] <javascript:>> 
> wrote: 
>
> > I'm not sure if this is an intended feature or a bug, but for me Witch 
> is condensing character spacing in it's window. 
> > I personally find this extremely difficult to read and not at all 
> helpful. Is there a way to turn this off or is a fix on the way? 
>
> It’s actually neither an intended feature nor a bug. It’s something Apple 
> did which is affecting Witch. Here’s what’s going on… 
>
> Prior to Witch 3.9.8, we used Apple’s OS X 10.10 SDK (Software Development 
> Kit) to compile our code. With Witch 3.9.8, we switched to the OS X 10.11 
> SDK — there are many reasons for this, and we need to stay on this SDK 
> going forward. 
>
> That change caused the font issues you’re seeing: For some reason, Apple 
> greatly decreased the font spacing on certain older fonts in the newer SDK. 
> Peter (our founder/programmer) has a theory on why they may have done this: 
> Perhaps it's a compromise they made for the sake of backwards 
> compatibility. On average, San Francisco is a lot narrower than its system 
> font predecessors, so by allowing old system fonts to shrink down to 
> negative spacing values that render the text almost unreadable, they 
> increase the chances of interfaces designed for 10.11 (i.e., with a 
> narrower font in mind) displaying all the necessary info when the app runs 
> on a pre-10.11 system. But that’s just our guess. 
>
> The good news is that not all fonts are affected. Lucida Grande and 
> Helvetica/Neue are particularly bad, but the "Standard" font is totally 
> fine, as are Apple's downloadable San Francisco fonts (developer account 
> required), if you have them installed. 
>
> We’ll be pushing an update shortly that changes the default font in Witch 
> (on newer OS X versions) so that users won’t see Apple’s odd spacing 
> choices. 
>
> That’s about the best we can do, as we can’t regress to the prior SDK. 
>
> regards, 
> -rob.

---

From: Greg Fulco <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2016 21:49:29 -0700 (PDT)

Wow. Thanks so much for the quick, thorough and thoughtful reply.

---

From: Rob Griffiths <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2016 21:30:34 -0700

On Aug 8, 2016, at 8:43 PM, Greg Fulco <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I'm not sure if this is an intended feature or a bug, but for me Witch is condensing character spacing in it's window.
> I personally find this extremely difficult to read and not at all helpful. Is there a way to turn this off or is a fix on the way?

It’s actually neither an intended feature nor a bug. It’s something Apple did which is affecting Witch. Here’s what’s going on…

Prior to Witch 3.9.8, we used Apple’s OS X 10.10 SDK (Software Development Kit) to compile our code. With Witch 3.9.8, we switched to the OS X 10.11 SDK — there are many reasons for this, and we need to stay on this SDK going forward.

That change caused the font issues you’re seeing: For some reason, Apple greatly decreased the font spacing on certain older fonts in the newer SDK. Peter (our founder/programmer) has a theory on why they may have done this: Perhaps it's a compromise they made for the sake of backwards compatibility. On average, San Francisco is a lot narrower than its system font predecessors, so by allowing old system fonts to shrink down to negative spacing values that render the text almost unreadable, they increase the chances of interfaces designed for 10.11 (i.e., with a narrower font in mind) displaying all the necessary info when the app runs on a pre-10.11 system. But that’s just our guess.

The good news is that not all fonts are affected. Lucida Grande and Helvetica/Neue are particularly bad, but the "Standard" font is totally fine, as are Apple's downloadable San Francisco fonts (developer account required), if you have them installed. 

We’ll be pushing an update shortly that changes the default font in Witch (on newer OS X versions) so that users won’t see Apple’s odd spacing choices.

regards,
-rob.

---

From: Greg Fulco <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2016 20:43:51 -0700 (PDT)

I'm not sure if this is an intended feature or a bug, but for me Witch is 
condensing character spacing in it's window.
I personally find this extremely difficult to read and not at all helpful. 
Is there a way to turn this off or is a fix on the way?

<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I1nmXXTn3b0/V6lQ1RP3SrI/AAAAAAAAC-I/nr8RxOiAfJcfWLq_49eXn8-NfaCMPejzgCLcB/s1600/witchcondensed.tiff>

I'm running Witch 3.9.8 on OS X 10.11.6.