Dynamic text and global font kerning problem

[andrewhaddock]

We have a dynamic text box that's using the unicode Ariel font. The text is
fine except that the kerning pairs for some characters are not displayed
correctly resulting in what either looks like an extra space between characters
or overlapping characters. The problem doesn't appear with static text using
the same font.

We've also tried using the Nimbus Sans Global font and have the same problem.

The problem seems to be with flash and not the font. Has anyone found a
workaround?

[wfron]

Hello Andrew,

the problem with dynamic and input text boxes appeared with the release of
flash. Flash developpers tried to fix this problem later on with flash mx 2004
and flash 8.

Dynamic and Input text boxes cound not be bended or rotated. That's due to the
fact that when flash publishes the text inside these boxes it transformes the
font to jpg. As you notices, if it's a static text, there's no problem.

In flash mx 2004 & flash 8, you can select the text box and embed the font
inside it. You'll notice an increase in the file size, but your dynamic & input
text will have the flexibility; the font will be diplayed as it should be, the
boxes and be bended, rotated, twisted, animted,...

I hope this helps.

waterflame

[gr8brandini]

Thanks for the reply. I work with Andrew and perhaps can further explain our
situation.

We have text that has been translated into a variety of languages, including
some languages that use non-western character sets, like cyrillic and asian.
This unicode text is saved into a UTF-8 encoded XML file.

In flash, we have a single dynamic text field that is set to use a global font
(a single font that contains all the characters found in our selection of
languages) The text field is set to embed all the character sets that are
needed for our languages. And then using actionscript, flash loads the XML and
places the text data into the dynamic text field at runtime.

This process works with the exception of one small thing. Flash successfully
imports the data and even displays all the correct characters, but the problem
shows up in the kerning of certain characters. We haven't done enough testing
to determine exactly which characters have problems, but in general they seem
to be somewhat 'unusual' ones (sorry I lack the technical vocabulary), for
example certain diacriticals, and characters like smart quotes and em-dashes...
Again, these characters do show up, but they either have too little or too
much white space surrounding them.

As another test, if we simply copy the unicode text and paste it directly into
another text field that is set to be static, the text displays without error.
We have tried two separate global fonts that both produce problems of this kind
(although not exactly consistent). This seems to indicate that the problem is
not with the fonts, but rather with the flash application somehow not correctly
embedding the character kerning information for these global fonts.

This is just speculation, but perhaps the issue involves the size or character
count of the font (the 2 global fonts we have tried are both over 20 Mbs)
Using a smaller font that includes the same 'problem' characters works without
error.

here is a screenshot of a small test that shows a piece of Polish text
imported into flash using two different global fonts, as well as the same text
displayed correctly by just pasting directly into a static text field. A few
of the 'problem' areas have been underlined:
[url]http://216.210.230.35/~brandon/Arial_Nimbus_screenshot.gif[/url]