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abrupt exits and a question

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Clair Dunn

abrupt exits and a question

Sadly this seems to be the ONLY glyph I can work on. No matter what
route I take to call up another glyph, FF just quits.

When I start it up again, I am able to work on the cent sign, but that's
it. So right now, I am a "one-glyph-wonder"! lol

AND the question:

Do developers see this forum. I mean, will one of them see my msgs.
about the exits?

Thanks - still new, so I will have questions. And I appreciate all help.
Thanks again.

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Martin B. Brilliant

Re: abrupt exits and a question

To any developer who sees this:

Full disclosure: I was a Fortran wizard on the IBM 360/370 in the 1970’s and I wrote an accounting system in C in Unix in the 1980’s. I know little beyond that.

I do know a little about memory allocation. You have to do it right. A segmentation fault means the program has tried to access memory where it does not have memory allocated to it. It is not the fault of the user. It’s the fault of the programmer. It happens when the user gets to a part of the program where memory allocation has not been done right.

In other words, at least one piece of the gorillion lines of code that make up the FontForge system is wrong and needs to be done over.

> On May 27, 2016, at 9:41 AM, Clair Dunn <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Sadly this seems to be the ONLY glyph I can work on. No matter what
> route I take to call up another glyph, FF just quits.
>
> When I start it up again, I am able to work on the cent sign, but that's
> it. So right now, I am a "one-glyph-wonder"! lol
>
> AND the question:
>
> Do developers see this forum. I mean, will one of them see my msgs.
> about the exits?
>
> Thanks - still new, so I will have questions. And I appreciate all help.
> Thanks again.
>

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic
patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are
consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow,
J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity
planning reports. https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/305295220;132659582;e
_______________________________________________
fontforge-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html

Joe

Re: abrupt exits and a question

In reply to this post by Clair Dunn

Hi Clair,
There are a few of us developers watching, but we do have to balance our
days to meet obligations like work, family, friends, etc. so you may see
us fade-in and/or fade-out with time. Fortunately, you made a good
choice... The "good" reason for using the "user forum" is that there are
potentially a lot more eyes watching and hopefully many more people with
the same interest that can help answer your questions, so please, please,
please, go ahead and ask on this mailing list. More eyes are watching here.

Resetting Fontforge:
Reading through your plight with the one glyph wonder ;-p
...and seeing the cent glyph, I would try start clean. Fontforge has a
hidden directory (starts with the period (for linux) to tell the operating
system this is a hidden directory). You can see it on the command line by
typing:
ls -a ~
or ls -la ~

As David crosss suggested, you may want to put it aside, and eventually if
you decide it's of no use, you can delete it.

mv ~/.fontforge ~/.fontforge-old
or eventually delete it
rm ~/.fontforge-old

Running Valgrind:
Most developers can use a little extra information, and have various tools
to work with. For myself, I tend to like Valgrind. Due to your problem
here, I suggest you install it and start a new file.
To use valgrind, you put what you normally type on the command line behind
the valgrind command (you will notice fontforge is a bit slower since
valgrind is doing all these background checks in case you hit that
segfault, so that we have some info later to display on the commandline;

valgrind fontforge mynew_one_cent.sfd

or since you are going graphical...
valgrind fontforge

...and then go click the file, or start a new file. If you have a lot of work
invested in your one cent, such as other glyphs, continue with your file,
but if you only have the one cent glyph, let's start fresh.

When I used to do CAD, I noted that frequently, you may unintentially
jitter the mouse when you press or release the mouse. If you find yourself
doing that, I suggest move the mouse approximately close to the point you
mean to use, then using the arrow keys to slide the cursor to the right
location, and then press the RETURN/ENTER key to select the point you
wanted. If you are holding-down the mouse button and need to do this, I
suggest to continue holding the button down but ALSO lifting the mouse off
of the desk so that the mouse button doesn't jitter, and then using the
arrow keys to move the point to the location you want to choose. then you
can let go of the mouse button without jittering the location by accident.

Fontforge sort of has similar controls, so you will need to experiment a
little on what works here.

Another recommendation is when you open up a glyph window to make your one
cent, then you may notice the window is sort of small. I suggest expanding
the window to take up a much larger area of your screen, plus zoom-in so
that the 0,0 to 1000,1000 area takes up as much of the screen as it can.
This will allow you to use the arrow keys to move the cursor a little more
precisely. You should see the coordinates moving up or down while using the
arrow keys, so if you mean to precisely put a point on 100,100, watch the
numbers as it will be precise. You'll need to experiment a little to see
what works best for you here.

If you want to stop a certain command, then click the mouse outside of the
window, or start a new command, this will prevent you from finding yourself
drawing over the same line over and over again like an etch-a-scetch (which
is something you do not want to do, but was noted in your one cent
screenshot with multiple lines one on top of the next line).

Bug reporting:
If you get a segfault you'll notice that valgrind gives a bit more detail.
For myself, I'm interested in the subroutines that were called before it
reached segfault (other developers are interested using other tools).
If the segfault is rather random, it will be fairly hard to fix, since we
can't repeat the problem ourselves...therefore, unlikely fixable at the
time. If you find that you are able to repeat the problem, and seem to find a
way to make it happen, that is good. In this case, i suggest, save your
work up to as close as possible (before segfault), then do the action you
know will trigger the segfault... copy the text that was shown on the
commandline by valgrind.
When you saved your work before the segfault, will be the file we would use
to start from, so that when we follow the action you did, we can repeat the
problem ourselves.
This mailing list has a 10K attachment limit, so I would suggest zipping
the file before attaching it to your email (and ensure it is smaller than
10K in size).

...hopefully the advice here helps you get a lot further.

Cheers!
Joe

On May 27, 2016 06:41:26 AM Clair Dunn wrote:

> Sadly this seems to be the ONLY glyph I can work on. No matter what
> route I take to call up another glyph, FF just quits.
>
> When I start it up again, I am able to work on the cent sign, but that's
> it. So right now, I am a "one-glyph-wonder"! lol
>
> AND the question:
>
> Do developers see this forum. I mean, will one of them see my msgs.
> about the exits?
>
> Thanks - still new, so I will have questions. And I appreciate all help.
> Thanks again.

Joe

Re: abrupt exits and a question

In reply to this post by Martin B. Brilliant

On May 27, 2016 08:14:11 AM Martin B. Brilliant wrote:

> To any developer who sees this:
>
> Full disclosure: I was a Fortran wizard on the IBM 360/370 in the 1970’s
> and I wrote an accounting system in C in Unix in the 1980’s. I know
> little beyond that.
>
> I do know a little about memory allocation. You have to do it right. A
> segmentation fault means the program has tried to access memory where
> it does not have memory allocated to it. It is not the fault of the
> user. It’s the fault of the programmer. It happens when the user gets
> to a part of the program where memory allocation has not been done
> right.
>
> In other words, at least one piece of the gorillion lines of code that
> make up the FontForge system is wrong and needs to be done over.

Hi Martin,
You are correct about the memory, but also noting...
Your talents would be well appreciated here.
...but that's if you have the time...
...and if you have the interest to help improve the gorrillian code. ;-P

If you can successfully compile the code from source, add a few tweaks, and
compile it again successfully, then you are in good standing to begin
experimenting with the code.

From your description, what has changed at most is that subroutines have
changed from one main-master routine:
main {
wait for key choice x
do stuff
return results
}

...to be called from a mouse-click instead:
mouse-click-routine-x {
do stuff;
return results;
}

from your description, I think you would feel quite at home looking at stuff
like fontforge/scripting.c or fontforge/python.c, but before taking-on a
monster like that, you may want to try something a lot easier, like maybe
something very atomic, independent, and undisturbing of the larger
picture...if you want to give that a try, would you be interested in
looking at adding something like pcx read/write in the gimage directory
alongside tiff,gif,etc?

...more advice coming, assuming you're interested.

Cheers!
Joe

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic
patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are
consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow,
J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity
planning reports. https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/305295220;132659582;e
_______________________________________________
fontforge-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html

Clair Dunn

Re: abrupt exits and a question

In reply to this post by Joe

Hi Joe --
What a wonderful reply this is. And, yes, I'm completely familiar with
the vicissitudes of life and their relation to Open Source work! I never
meant to demand; merely to ask if developers were here in this forum! I
can't tell you how much I appreciate the FF developers. They have my
undying support! (Not that that is worth much -- lol.)

I already did delete my cent file, because the next day, ??? I worked
for hours with no issues. I cleaned up my entire font and then created a
new cent glyph. This time I treated it like an "o" and made the outline
in one continuous path and then added the "negative space". I was able
to save it with no issues. I tried that way because when I worked with
layers before, that did not come out well at all.

Anyway, I'm very interested in valgrind and will investigate -- I was a
tech writer/junior programmer at Vermont Creative Software years ago and
one of our products was a similar one, called Ghost. Our main product
was Vermont Views a front end C library for database programmers, which
was pretty well known in the programming world at the time.

Anyway, as I get more familiar with FF, (I'm making my way through all
the tutorials/messages/articles I can find.) I hope I can eventually be
useful on that end of things.

Again, thanks so much for your splendid reply.

Cheers,
Clair

On 05/28/2016 09:12 PM, Jose Da Silva wrote:

> Hi Clair,
> There are a few of us developers watching, but we do have to balance our
> days to meet obligations like work, family, friends, etc. so you may see
> us fade-in and/or fade-out with time. Fortunately, you made a good
> choice... The "good" reason for using the "user forum" is that there are
> potentially a lot more eyes watching and hopefully many more people with
> the same interest that can help answer your questions, so please, please,
> please, go ahead and ask on this mailing list. More eyes are watching here.
>
> Resetting Fontforge:
> Reading through your plight with the one glyph wonder ;-p
> ...and seeing the cent glyph, I would try start clean. Fontforge has a
> hidden directory (starts with the period (for linux) to tell the operating
> system this is a hidden directory). You can see it on the command line by
> typing:
> ls -a ~
> or ls -la ~
>
> As David crosss suggested, you may want to put it aside, and eventually if
> you decide it's of no use, you can delete it.
>
> mv ~/.fontforge ~/.fontforge-old
> or eventually delete it
> rm ~/.fontforge-old
> ...
>
>

Joe

Re: abrupt exits and a question

In reply to this post by Joe

On May 29, 2016 08:42:13 AM you wrote:
> Joe,
>
> I’m interested.

Sounds encouraging.
Rather than be a private lesson, I'll post in the developer mailing list
with the assumption that even though one person has questions, there are
several "lurkers" that are interested but haven't asked, aren't sure what
to ask, or think the question they may have is too dumb to ask.

The reason for posting in the developer mailing list is because it's about
coding, this way we won't be cluttering the user mailing list about C, when
this list is mainly about font design, and how to...etc.
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-devel

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic
patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are
consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow,
J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity
planning reports. https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/305295220;132659582;e
_______________________________________________
fontforge-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html

Joe

Re: abrupt exits and a question

In reply to this post by Clair Dunn

On May 29, 2016 03:45:25 AM Clair Dunn wrote:
> Hi Joe --
> What a wonderful reply this is. And, yes, I'm completely familiar with
> the vicissitudes of life and their relation to Open Source work! I never
> meant to demand; merely to ask if developers were here in this forum! I
> can't tell you how much I appreciate the FF developers. They have my
> undying support! (Not that that is worth much -- lol.)

As long as you didn't take the reply personally.
Assume there are many lurkers reading - I, and then you, have answered a
question that may not have occurred with them.

> I already did delete my cent file, because the next day, ??? I worked
> for hours with no issues.

There are many assumptions in the program...so if you follow a given path,
you could work at it for hours without a problem, but if you do something
unexpected, it doesn't deal with it properly. Many of the 700+ bugs listed
fall into this second category.

> Anyway, I'm very interested in valgrind and will investigate -- I was a
> tech writer/junior programmer at Vermont Creative Software years ago and
> one of our products was a similar one, called Ghost. Our main product
> was Vermont Views a front end C library for database programmers, which
> was pretty well known in the programming world at the time.

I'm familiar with Ghost, and Partition Magic.
Glad to hear you are versed in the black-arts of C.

> Anyway, as I get more familiar with FF, (I'm making my way through all
> the tutorials/messages/articles I can find.) I hope I can eventually be
> useful on that end of things.

Even if you aren't a programmer, there are a lot of avenues to follow.
For example, your (personal) search for all sorts of info suggests the
existing documentation may be weak in some areas and could use some extra
info (you gained personally and think worth adding - while fresh in your
mind): https://github.com/fontforge/designwithfontforge.com

There are some developers that do only translation (I've seen several
languages upgraded added to the po directory, without a single line of C
contributed.

Some help files can use a bit of updating (doc html directory).

...and certainly, of course, the C code itself, you found one spot where
the program falls-over, but there are many other places as well.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic
patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are
consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow,
J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity
planning reports. https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/305295220;132659582;e
_______________________________________________
fontforge-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html

Clair Dunn

Re: abrupt exits and a question

Hi Joe --

On 05/29/2016 03:18 PM, Jose Da Silva wrote:
> I'm familiar with Ghost, and Partition Magic.
> Glad to hear you are versed in the black-arts of C.

One of my closest and oldest friends wrote Ghost single-handedly. He
lives not far from me in Northern Vermont.

I will follow up on your suggestions and poke around on the web and
github with an eye to my future usefulness.

Thanks again.

On 05/29/2016 03:18 PM, Jose Da Silva wrote:

> On May 29, 2016 03:45:25 AM Clair Dunn wrote:
>> Hi Joe --
>> What a wonderful reply this is. And, yes, I'm completely familiar with
>> the vicissitudes of life and their relation to Open Source work! I never
>> meant to demand; merely to ask if developers were here in this forum! I
>> can't tell you how much I appreciate the FF developers. They have my
>> undying support! (Not that that is worth much -- lol.)
> As long as you didn't take the reply personally.
> Assume there are many lurkers reading - I, and then you, have answered a
> question that may not have occurred with them.
>
>> I already did delete my cent file, because the next day, ??? I worked
>> for hours with no issues.
> There are many assumptions in the program...so if you follow a given path,
> you could work at it for hours without a problem, but if you do something
> unexpected, it doesn't deal with it properly. Many of the 700+ bugs listed
> fall into this second category.
>
>> Anyway, I'm very interested in valgrind and will investigate -- I was a
>> tech writer/junior programmer at Vermont Creative Software years ago and
>> one of our products was a similar one, called Ghost. Our main product
>> was Vermont Views a front end C library for database programmers, which
>> was pretty well known in the programming world at the time.
> I'm familiar with Ghost, and Partition Magic.
> Glad to hear you are versed in the black-arts of C.
>
>> Anyway, as I get more familiar with FF, (I'm making my way through all
>> the tutorials/messages/articles I can find.) I hope I can eventually be
>> useful on that end of things.
> Even if you aren't a programmer, there are a lot of avenues to follow.
> For example, your (personal) search for all sorts of info suggests the
> existing documentation may be weak in some areas and could use some extra
> info (you gained personally and think worth adding - while fresh in your
> mind): https://github.com/fontforge/designwithfontforge.com
>
> There are some developers that do only translation (I've seen several
> languages upgraded added to the po directory, without a single line of C
> contributed.
>
> Some help files can use a bit of updating (doc html directory).
>
> ...and certainly, of course, the C code itself, you found one spot where
> the program falls-over, but there are many other places as well.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic
> patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are
> consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow,
> J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity
> planning reports. https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/305295220;132659582;e
> _______________________________________________
> fontforge-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
> http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html

Clair Dunn

Re: abrupt exits and a question

In reply to this post by Joe

On 05/29/2016 03:18 PM, Jose Da Silva wrote:
> I'm familiar with Ghost, and Partition Magic.
> Glad to hear you are versed in the black-arts of C.

One of my closest and oldest friends wrote Ghost single-handedly. He
lives not far from me in Northern Vermont.

I will follow up on your suggestions and poke around on the web and
github with an eye to my future usefulness.

Thanks again.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic
patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are
consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow,
J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity
planning reports. https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/305295220;132659582;e
_______________________________________________
fontforge-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fontforge-users
http://fontforge.10959.n7.nabble.com/User-f8781.html