Textadept v13+ fails to load font variants on Windows

[snoopy]

Starting with 13 Alpha1, loading font variants on Windows such as JetBrains Mono NL ExtraLight no longer works. Only JetBrains Mono NL works.
I've tried working around this by setting the weight manually in set_theme or directly in the theme itself but without success.
Looking at the changelog this might be related to Scintilla updates. It continues working fine on Linux.

[orbitalquark]

So it works fine with 12.9 and stops working in 13.0 alpha? Can you try a nightly build? I recently updated Qt on Windows. This could be a Qt issue with font rendering. I doubt Scintilla is to blame.

[snoopy]

I've checked the latest nightly and it does not work.
For clarification the setup looks like this:

view:set_theme('everforest', { font = 'JetBrains Mono NL ExtraLight', size = 17 })

This used to work up until 12.9.
Starting from 13A1 it no longer works and to load the font you have to do it like this:

view:set_theme('everforest', { font = 'JetBrains Mono NL', size = 17 })

Which obviously loads the normal weighted font.

I saw Scintilla made some changes to DirectWrite interfaces recently hence my guess. It could explain why it no longer works on Windows but continues to work on Linux.

[orbitalquark]

Strange. Textadept builds with Scintilla's Qt platform on Windows, not its Win32 platform (which uses DirectWrite). That's why I doubt Scintilla is to blame for this. Nevertheless, I'll see if I can produce a 13.0 build for you with the Scintilla from 12.9 and see if that makes a difference.

[orbitalquark]

Okay, it looks like GitHub won't let me share GitHub Action artifacts. Here's what I suggest you do:

1. Fork Textadept on GitHub or update your current fork.
2. Make sure it has the "scintilla-557" branch in it (https://github.com/orbitalquark/textadept/tree/scintilla-557).
3. Click on the "Actions" tab.
4. Click on the "release" item on the left navigation pane.
5. Click "Run Workflow" on the right side of the page.
6. Pick "scintilla-557" from the branch combo box.
7. Uncheck "macOS", "Linux", and "BSD" boxes.
8. Check "Nightly build", "Do not run unit tests" and "Do not run coverage job".
9. Click "Run Workflow".
10. When the job finishes running, click on it and scroll all the way down the page.
11. There will be a "artifacts-windows-2022" that you can download.
12. Unzip it and run it as you would normally.

Sorry to make you jump through those hoops :(

[snoopy]

No worries, I appreciate your effort.
I ran through the whole process and the problem persists. So I guess Scintilla really is not to blame here.

[orbitalquark]

Are you feeling adventurous? We can try and see if Qt is to blame, and which version.

You can open up the .workflows/github/release.yml, search for "6.10" (https://github.com/orbitalquark/textadept/blob/default/.github/workflows/release.yml#L116) and change it to 6.9, commit, and try the whole build process again. If you still get the issue, try 6.8. If that still fails, then it's probably not Qt.

I think GitHub Actions retired its windows-2019 runners late last year, and that forced me to upgrade to the 2022 runners. I wonder if they are to blame. That would be weird...

[snoopy]

I'll try that and get back to you.

[snoopy]

I've tested with both, 6.9 and 6.8. Neither made a difference.

As a workaround I've edited the font file itself. I changed the name of the variant to the base name. This way it loads the correct font.
I'm still curious what caused the change. If you have any other ideas, let me know. I'm open to further testing.

[orbitalquark]

The only think I can think of is to unpack a nightly build and a 12.9 build side-by-side. Then copy all the dlls from the 12.9 build into the nightly build and see if that works. If it does, there's something in the dlls at the time of 12.9 that cannot be reproduced now.

[snoopy]

I copied over the dlls and the nightly failed to start. It seems like it's caused by the qt dlls. I tried mixing them but as soon as one of the qt dlls from 12.9 is in the nightly directory, it won't start. Launched it from the terminal but saw no error message of any kind.

[orbitalquark]

Sorry, that was my mistake. You made a nightly build with Qt 6.9. Us that instead. Since 12.9 was built with 6.9, you may be able to use its dlls with another Qt 6.9 build.

[snoopy]

Tried that but it doesn't work either. For now the edited font file is an adequate workaround.
I'll leave this open if you don't mind. Maybe something will crop up in the future.