Problems with FOG 5 demo

[Shanafeg]

I’ve been working with the demo of the new FOG 5 and I’ve encountered some problems.  Several years ago, I used FOG 4.1.5 for Windows to create a TrueType font of Cloister Initials.  This typeface has rather intricate letters, so I figured it would be a good test for the new version of FOG.  My TTF font is 187k in size and loads into my old FOG 4.1.5 in 3 seconds.  If I load it into the new FOG 5 demo, however, it takes 12 seconds, four times as long.  And then, moving points on this font, which is instantaneous with FOG 4.1.5, takes several seconds with FOG 5 (whether using smoothed or unsmoothed outlines).  You move the cursor, then wait, and then the point jumps to the new position.  This is rather awkward, to say the least.  FOG 5.3 seems a lot slower than the older version, in any case with this font.  Finally, if I generate a new TTF font in Win 95 format with FOG 4.1.5, it takes 3 seconds.  If I generate an OpenType TTF font from the same original with FOG 5, it takes 70 seconds and the resulting TTF font is 592k large, nearly three times the size of the original.  (If I load that file into FOG 4.1.5 and generate a font from it, the resulting file is saved back in the original size).  I’ve loaded a number of commercial fonts into FOG 5, and they are all regenerated much larger than their originals with FOG 5.  Perhaps my Cloister Initials font has too many points, but it works fine with FOG 4.1.5 and (most importantly) with every application I’ve used it with.  Why would it be such a challenge for FOG 5?  I’m running both versions of FOG on a Win XP SP3 Core 2 Duo machine with 3GB of RAM.  I can email you the font if doing so would help you figure out what’s happening here.  Thanks!

[Shanafeg]

I would like someone from tech support to respond to my previous post, since I see little reason to uupgrade to FOG 5 if FOG 4.1.5 actually works better in creating fonts.  I assume I need to change some setting in FOG 5, but I don't know what it might be, and I'm not going to lay out several hundred dollars for the new version until I can get the demo version to work properly.  I tried to send you a technical assistance report, but I'm unable to do that because the form requires the registration number of the program and the demo version of FOG has no registration number so the form aborts.  I would like someone at Fontlab to address my concerns, but I seem to have no way of contacting anyone directly.    HELP!

[Alex Petrov (FontLab)]

Hi!
Sorry for so late response.
Surely you must not upgrade your FOG 4.1.5 if you feel comfortable with it. Yes, it is faster than version 5 and there are no special settings to make FOG 5 as fast as 4 was.
Anytime you can use support@fontlab.com address to contact Fontlab Support.

[Shanafeg]

Thanks for the reply.  I realize that the TTF files generated by the demo version of FOG 5 would be a bit larger than files generated by FOG 4.1.5, since points are added with the Fontlab logo on selected glyphs; and these would not be there on the commercial version.  But the files I've generated testing out the FOG 5 demo seem a LOT larger than would be the case with a few extra points.  Has anyone tried generating a font from each version (FOG 4.1.5, FOG 5 commercial version) to see if there's any difference in the resulting font size?

[Alex Petrov (FontLab)]

I was speaking only about full versions and yes, there is a big difference because the export module in FOG 5 was borrowed from Fontlab Studio.

[Shanafeg]

Interesting.  I assume that the larger file size allows more detail or other features to be incorporated than in the smaller FOG 4.1.5 size?  I notice that FOG 5 allows greater magnification of characters during editing, so that discrepancies not visible with FOG 4.1.5 can be located and fixed.  Do these more detailed fonts require larger sizes?  I started out on an 8-bit computer with 64K of memory and no hard drive, so I'm maybe overly conscious of file sizes and the resulting download times. 

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