Arial Font and Kerning Issue

Oct 30, 2014

Hi,

I am using Arial in one of my SL2 projects. Text looks fine while developing, however once I publish it, it gets improper kerning. Space after characters 'u', 'n', 'h', 'm' looks loose. This problem is more obvious when Player Size is set to 'Scale player to fill browser window'. I have viewed the publish version both on local driver and network.

My testing environment meets all the requirements described here . Monitor DPI is set to 96. Cleartype option is on. 

Arial had no issues in SL1. This is an SL2 issue. I have attached a sample SL2 file, published version and highlighted Screen shot. 

Thanks, 

43 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Hassan,

Thanks for sharing the images here and a copy of your .story file. I see the issue you're referring to, and see that it was reported to our QA team for review. I don't yet have an update to share here - but I'll add this thread to the existing report filed with our team so that they're aware of other users who are being impacted. 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Evelyn, 

This is an issue that is still with our QA team, so unfortunately I don't have an update to share. Once there is additional information we'll post in this thread and others that have been linked to the report. Since you've replied here you'll be subscribed so that way you'll receive an email notification with any updates. I cannot offer a time frame for when additional information will be available so you may want to look at using a different font in the meantime. 

Erik P.

I have exactly the same problem. As my client has very strong CI / CD rules, there is no way for me to use another font as the one he wants. It's not only with Arial, but with other fonts too. The customer has an own font called Fruttiger Roman - same problem.

I've to publish on Sunday evening latest, so it's very urgent for me.

Erik P.

Hi Christie

Yesterday I talked to the the guy who is in charge of CI / CD at my customer's company (one of the major companies in our country with >55'000 employees worldwide). He told me, I'm allowed to publish the actual project with the kerning issue on the corporate font but next time, I'll have to either use another tool or he will pass over to another vendor...

Please forward this information to your QA team. I'm sure many other companies will have the same problem in the next few months... 

And: Yes, I use the latest version of SL2 and the player size ist locked at optimal size.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Erik,

Certainly understand - and although IE can run HTML5 content it may not perform as well as others. I like to use a site such as HTML5test.com to see how the different browsers compare. 

We'll also continue to keep folks posted regarding our QA team's work on this issue - but as we're unable to offer a timeframe, it's best to stay subscribed to the thread as you'll receive email notification based on replies. 

Victor Linnemann

Hi Articulate Support

I am facing the very same Problem as mentioned above. We have the requirement to use Frutiger Roman as OTF with TTF flavour in Storyline 2 Update 7. HTML5 is no option; we have to produce in Flash. As you can see on the screenshot, the kerning of the letter "i" is the main issue with this specific font. Yesterday we again got a complaint from our customer who is very strict in the application of his brand design rules.

As you know, this issue has not been solved by your QA team for over twelve month now. We (I mean all Storyline 2 users) urgently need a feasible solution.

Can you please point out in more detail which font types exactly cause these kerning issues and by what technical reason?

Erik P.

Hi Ashley

Fully confirm, what Victor wrote. Our customers are not happy at all with the e-Learnings we produced the last months, just because we cannot apply his CI/CD rules. Using other (similar) fonts or publising with HTML5 is no option. We are talking about some of the major companies in our country. We don't want to loose this clients and we don't want to switch to an other authoring tool.

I also kindly ask you to provide us with more details on this issue and to give us a realistic timeline for having it fixed. Please just tell me if I can support with testing or sending some files, etc.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Eric and Victor, 

I know the issue is one that our team continues to investigate. I reached out to them specifically to see if we could get a list of fonts that perform better than others to share with you here.

As practice we're unable to share time frames in regards to fixes, updates, new releases, etc. which I know is not the answer you're looking for. Once I do have additional information to share I'll be sure to post here. Also thanks Erik for your offer of sending files, but I believe our team has enough files for testing at this point. If that changes I'll certainly let you know here! 

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