Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Tildes displayed as dashes (again)

KrisBlueNZ

Sadly passed away in 2015
Nov 28, 2011
8,393
Joined
Nov 28, 2011
Messages
8,393
When I'm typing or editing a post, I can type a tilde and it shows properly. But when I view the post, tildes are displayed as dashes (hyphens). This is confusing and often misleading.

I asked about it in the past and someone said that they don't have that problem, so I let it go. But recently user oreee has reported the same problem in https://www.electronicspoint.com/threads/common-drain-amplifier.270574 so I want to open the issue again.

I think this started happening with the change to XenForo.

I'm running Firefox (currently 32.0.3) under Windows 7 x64.

This is supposed to be a line of tildes but it shows as a line of dashes when I view the post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How does it look to you?
 

Harald Kapp

Moderator
Moderator
Nov 17, 2011
13,700
Joined
Nov 17, 2011
Messages
13,700
Perfectly as intended:
bla-png.15704

Windows 7, IE 11
 

Attachments

  • bla.png
    bla.png
    10.4 KB · Views: 657

KrisBlueNZ

Sadly passed away in 2015
Nov 28, 2011
8,393
Joined
Nov 28, 2011
Messages
8,393
Those characters look like tildes in (a) the post edit box, (b) in the "view page source" window, and (c) if copied then pasted into a text editor. They only look like dashes on the screen. Here's a screen capture so you don't think I'm crazy:

tildes displayed as dashes.png
Is it a problem with the font perhaps? I don't know what font it is, nor how to find out.
 

KrisBlueNZ

Sadly passed away in 2015
Nov 28, 2011
8,393
Joined
Nov 28, 2011
Messages
8,393
That's interesting Harald, your screen cap shows a slightly different font. Thanks for the info. I'll try Chrome and see what happens.
 

KrisBlueNZ

Sadly passed away in 2015
Nov 28, 2011
8,393
Joined
Nov 28, 2011
Messages
8,393
OK, using Chrome version "37.0.2062.124 m", I went to electronicspoint.com, did not log in, and went to this thread. Chrome initially displayed a sparse version of the thread with some page elements missing:

tildes as dashes Chrome first display.png
I've shown the important part of the post zoomed in the middle - the tildes are actually tildes at this point.

Then about half a second later, Chrome redraws the page with the full formatting, and the tildes change to dashes:

tildes as dashes Chrome second display.png

This could, again, be a difference in font. The font that's used for the first display is slightly different from the font used for the final rendition of the page. So it could still be a font issue.
 
Last edited:

KrisBlueNZ

Sadly passed away in 2015
Nov 28, 2011
8,393
Joined
Nov 28, 2011
Messages
8,393
I can't find any fonts on my system that show a hyphen where they should show a tilde. I tried the standard Windows font viewer, but it doesn't show the tilde character! I've tried my word processor, and I've used the font display app at http://www.myfontbook.com/ with tilde in the display string, using both "waterfall" and "glyphs" display modes.

I've Googled this problem and didn't find anything, apart from one report related to Linux.

Can I get some more feedback on how many people are affected by this problem please? Include your OS, OS version, and browser and version.

~~~~~~~~~~ (are these tildes or hyphens?) ~~~~~~~~~~
 

Supercap2F

Mar 22, 2014
550
Joined
Mar 22, 2014
Messages
550
Well here on a MAC 10.6.8 with Safari version 5.1.10, you can kind of tell that the tildes are really tildes, but they do look a lot like a dash. Here's a screen shot:
SCREENSHOT#1.png

If I put a bunch next to each other and zoom in, I can really see the difference:
SCREENSHOT#2.jpg

And here's what they look like on windows 7 x32 with Firefox version 30.0 :
SCREENSHOT#3.JPG
Just like dashes.
EDIT: I just realised that my version of firefox is out of date. I updated to 32.0.3 and it still looks the same.
Dan
 
Last edited:

Ian

Administrator
Aug 23, 2006
1,486
Joined
Aug 23, 2006
Messages
1,486
Hmm, that's a strange one. I think this may be a problem with the "Open Fonts" we're using. Let me do a bit of research and see what I can find.
 

Ian

Administrator
Aug 23, 2006
1,486
Joined
Aug 23, 2006
Messages
1,486
Yep, it looks like a problem with the Open Sans font that we've got running. Others seem to have the same problem too and I can fix it by disabling Open Sans in the browser console.

I'll see if there is a fix for it, either via encoding or by changing font, as this isn't supposed to happen.
 

Ian

Administrator
Aug 23, 2006
1,486
Joined
Aug 23, 2006
Messages
1,486
Well, this is very odd indeed. @KrisBlueNZ, can you try zooming in on those dashes (CTRL and +) and see if they change to tilde symbols? I think this bug is a little more confusing than I first thought and this should confirm it.
 

Ian

Administrator
Aug 23, 2006
1,486
Joined
Aug 23, 2006
Messages
1,486
Scratch my last post, as I've tried this on a few systems and Open Sans at 13px/11pt seems to cause Tildes to appear as dashes on some systems - but enough that it would cause problems for people.

Temporarily, I've disabled the Open Sans font on the site and switched to sans-serif. What do you all think of the new font - does it look ok, if not I can try some alternatives :).
 

KrisBlueNZ

Sadly passed away in 2015
Nov 28, 2011
8,393
Joined
Nov 28, 2011
Messages
8,393
That's fixed the problem on my machine Ian!

I had tried zooming in (Ctrl +) as far as possible, with no change.

Can you leave it like this? Or will that cause other problems?

The font now looks very slightly different perhaps, but I've always thought that the old font with the problem looked great, and it still looks great to me.
 

Ian

Administrator
Aug 23, 2006
1,486
Joined
Aug 23, 2006
Messages
1,486
Yeah, sorry the zooming in won't do much with this new font - but I'd confirmed it on a few other machines. For whatever reason, the old font doesn't place nicely with tilde marks at a certain text size and some browser configurations.

I'll leave the font like this for now, but there are some other consequences if I do that, so I'll have a think over the next few days. I do prefer the old font too, but this one is perfectly fine. Something that would be a workaround for the tilde problem would be to embolden it - however it would rely on the poster knowing about that workaround!
 

Ian

Administrator
Aug 23, 2006
1,486
Joined
Aug 23, 2006
Messages
1,486
As an interesting test, we use Open Sans on this site:

https://www.google.com/fonts

Try typing a tilde in the preview box and then set the pixel size to 13px, that recreates the problem in most instances - odd isn't it!
 

Ian

Administrator
Aug 23, 2006
1,486
Joined
Aug 23, 2006
Messages
1,486
I've had to revert back to the old font, as disabling it caused more problems than I was aware of an hour ago. I've submitted a bug report to Google Fonts, as it looks like some additional "font hinting" may solve the problem at 13px (out of the scope of my knowledge! :eek:). In the meantime, emboldening a tilde should fix it as a workaround (if I can't fix the problem, I may make this happen automatically):

~~~
 

KrisBlueNZ

Sadly passed away in 2015
Nov 28, 2011
8,393
Joined
Nov 28, 2011
Messages
8,393
Thanks for the link to Google Fonts! Is there any pie they don't have their fingers in now?

I tried viewing Open Sans by Steve Matteson, 13 pixels high. Tildes display correctly for me, except for the "Extra-Bold 800", "Light 300 Italic", and "Extra-Bold 800 Italic" variants, where they look like hyphens. I'm not sure what this means but I hope it helps :-/

I can confirm that changing back to the old font as made the hyphens reappear for me, and the bold tildes at the end of post #15 display properly as tildes.

Thanks for your work on this Ian.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ian
Top