Why are condensed fonts not displayed properly in FireMonkey?
delphi, firemonkey, fonts
Solution
This seems to only affect fonts within families - if the font does not exist in the fonts folder under its own family name. Arial Narrow, for example, is a font within the "Arial" font file (it exists within a family and is not, per se, a family unto itself).
Typically a font family would include the four styles only
Arial (naively contains)
- Arial Regular
- Arial Bold
- Arial Italic
- Arial Bold Italic
"Arial Narrow", however, exists within the "Arial" family alongside the standard styles - ie :
Arial (actually contains)
- Arial Regular
- Arial Bold
- Arial Italic
- Arial Bold Italic
- Arial Narrow
- Arial Narrow Bold
- Arial Narrow Italic
- Arial Narrow Bold Italic
- Arial Black
It seems that FMX is only looking one level deep within any given font family and is not looking at any style variant that deviates from the strict GDI+ style definitions (Regular, Bold, Italic, Bold Italic).
This also, by inspection, affects Arial Black - other examples are easy to find by running through your fonts folder. Franklin Gothic Demi, Gill Sans Ultra Bold, etc... anything that follows the above pattern. The font seems to be rendered in the default Segoe UI when these fonts are encountered.
A stopgap solution is to use Arial and set the `Scale` property to `X=0.82` - it's not perfect, but it's quite close to Arial Narrow.
This is probably a bug and should be QC'd.
Problem
(And what can I do about it?) If I create two labels in VCL and set one to use Arial and another Arial Narrow I'll see an expected result. If I do the same in Firemonkey, the second label is not displayed in Arial Narrow. It is even not displayed in Arial (dots on i's are round, shape of 's' is all wrong etc.). Does anybody know why FM (I was testing this with Delphi XE4) is not displaying the font properly? Is there anything I can do about it? Source for the VCL form: ``` object Form3: TForm3 Left = 0 Top = 0 Caption = 'Form3' ClientHeight = 198 ClientWidth = 475 Color = clBtnFace Font.Charset = DEFAULT_CHARSET Font.Color = clWindowText Font.Height = -11 Font.Name = 'Tahoma' Font.Style = [] OldCreateOrder = False PixelsPerInch = 96 TextHeight = 13 object Label1: TLabel Left = 24 Top = 32 Width = 134 Height = 14 Caption = 'This label is using Arial @11' Font.Charset = DEFAULT_CHARSET Font.Color = clWindowText Font.Height = -11 Font.Name = 'Arial' Font.Style = [] ParentFont = False end object Label2: TLabel Left = 24 Top = 52 Width = 152 Height = 15 Caption = 'This label is using Arial Narrow @11' Font.Charset = DEFAULT_CHARSET Font.Color = clWindowText Font.Height = -11 Font.Name = 'Arial Narrow' Font.Style = [] ParentFont = False end object Label3: TLabel Left = 24 Top = 98 Width = 398 Height = 36 Caption = 'This label is using Arial @32' Font.Charset = DEFAULT_CHARSET Font.Color = clWindowText Font.Height = -32 Font.Name = 'Arial' Font.Style = [] ParentFont = False end object Label4: TLabel Left = 24 Top = 140 Width = 429 Height = 37 Caption = 'This label is using Arial Narrow @32' Font.Charset = DEFAULT_CHARSET Font.Color = clWindowText Font.Height = -32 Font.Name = 'Arial Narrow' Font.Style = [] ParentFont = False end end ``` Source for the FM form: ``` object Form4: TForm4 Left = 0 Top = 0 Caption = 'Form4' ClientHeight = 207 ClientWidth = 558 FormFactor.Width = 320 FormFactor.Height = 480 FormFactor.Devices = [dkDesktop, dkiPhone, dkiPad] DesignerMobile = False DesignerWidth = 0 DesignerHeight = 0 DesignerDeviceName = '' DesignerOrientation = 0 object Label1: TLabel Font.Family = 'Arial' StyledSettings = [ssSize, ssStyle, ssFontColor] Height = 17.000000000000000000 Position.X = 16.000000000000000000 Position.Y = 32.000000000000000000 Text = 'This label is using Arial @11' Width = 225.000000000000000000 end object Label2: TLabel Font.Family = 'Arial Narrow' StyledSettings = [ssSize, ssStyle, ssFontColor] Height = 17.000000000000000000 Position.X = 16.000000000000000000 Position.Y = 48.000000000000000000 Text = 'This label is using Arial Narrow @11' Width = 225.000000000000000000 end object Label3: TLabel Font.Family = 'Arial' Font.Size = 32.000000000000000000 StyledSettings = [ssStyle, ssFontColor] Height = 41.000000000000000000 Position.X = 16.000000000000000000 Position.Y = 104.000000000000000000 Text = 'This label is using Arial @32' Width = 433.000000000000000000 end object Label4: TLabel Font.Family = 'Arial Narrow' Font.Size = 32.000000000000000000 StyledSettings = [ssStyle, ssFontColor] Height = 65.000000000000000000 Position.X = 16.000000000000000000 Position.Y = 128.000000000000000000 Text = 'This label is using Arial Narrow @32' Width = 545.000000000000000000 end end ```