Storyline 2 - character spacing problem

Hi Stephen,

We're unable to offer time frames in regards to a fix or update, so I'm sorry if that was unclear to you. Once we do have information to share we'll post here and if you're subscribed to the thread you should receive that notification via email. 

I have the same problem with HelveticaNEUELT Std LT. The worst letter is w, see example below:

As a remedy, it is possible to choose Font/Spacing/Condensed for the w, but it is not reasonable to use this as a solution other than to a very limited extent.

The problem needs to be solved as it makes the texts in the productions look sloppy ...

Hi P-OE,

Thanks for sharing that image here. As mentioned we've reported this to our team and as it's mostly associated with certain fonts (such as Arial and some Helvetica) are you able to look at using a different font? If not, I'd suggest to continue using the workaround you mentioned here and we'll keep folks posted once there are additional updates to share. 

Thank you for your quick response! I guess we will have to convert to the Articulate font. The readability of the Articulate on screen font is much better in general compared to Helvetica. Let's hope that our people responsible for the CVI also can see the benefits... A problem like this can arise the most tedious obstructions when trying to solve it from a practical point of view.

This issue was raised 10 months ago, how long do you need to fix it?
Switching to another font is not an  option if your clients brand guidlines insists on using Arial.

Arial is one of the original core fonts for the web, not supporting it is just lazy.

For your information, the problem I experienced could be cleared out.

It turned out that the CVI font HelveticaNEUE Std LT was not fully installed on my (new) computer. The template we use is made with one variation of the Helvetica NEUE Std LT that was not part of the installed variations of the font. It was the emulated font that gave the poor result.

After installing the font completely, the representation of it became much better, see picture.

It was not obvious that this was the problem since the font was available in the font list in Storyline.

Thanks for sharing your solution :)

I am having a similar problem but with Century Gothic, how can I resolve this without changing the font?

This is still an open issue with our QA Team. I do not have an update to share on this issue nor am I aware of a workaround.

Samara, I'm afraid there are no workarounds that I've heard of, so we have to wait for Articulate's update. Unless it's somehow feasible for you to export every text box as a picture from Illustrator, for example... (Trying to think outside the box here.)

I was wondering if Articulate has a list of all the fonts that are currently not working properly in Storyline 2, as reported by SL2 users. This would help us choose problem-free fonts, when we are free to choose them (as another user pointed out, a company's branding may require Arial, say, and then we are left with no choice).

Hi Belen,

I don't know that there is a font list that we have, as the issues reported seem to occur in a few different circumstances, not across the product or software as whole. 

Still nothing from the team?  we are busy on a project that needs this issue resolved ASAP.  Please advise of the progress.

Hi Cynthia,

As Leslie mentioned recently, there is currently no update and we're unable to offer a time frame in regards to when we'll have additional information to share from our QA team. Once we do have information, we'll update this thread so as long as you're subscribed to the forums you'll receive the email notification. 

Hi Ashley,

Just to chime in, we're in the need of the font spacing corrected too.  I posted in another thread about the spacing issue and had to rollback to Patch 4 because the issues started in Patch 5.  Patch 6 only addressed Chrome and now the newest Patch 7 does not cover any font spacing issues. 

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/character-s-p-a-c-i-n-g-problem

Can you please advise something other than customers with font spacing issues to stick with Patch 4 as I would hate to be using an older patch and not being able to be on the latest and greatest patch with the up to date fixes.

Thanks,

Kelly

Hi Kelly, 

Thanks for reaching out here and linking to that forum thread as well. I looked into the issue we filed with our QA team, and after further investigation it seems that the spacing issues are connected to the ligatures feature of Storyline 2. If the spacing doesn't work within what you would prefer you can  change one of the 2 letters to a .5 smaller font and then the spacing issues goes away, it'll look as expected. 

I'm also having the same issue with Arial at 14pt. The client is not too happy with the weird kerning, i can understand - i'm not happy too, its Arial. 

Putting my frustration aside there is the ol' variable fix solution, which i thought i'd seen the back of but in this instance it can help.

Add a text variable with a value of nothing or a space and append the text box with the variable. This forces the text box to render as a dynamic text box (swf output), this will help with spacing and also the anti aliasing. However it does bring with it its own issues with line spacing and variances in the html5 output but generally it can be helpful in some but not all situations. 

Also Changing the font size has no effect in my case.

Hi, Chris -- So sorry to hear you are experiencing issues, as well! If you would like to work with our Support Engineers to see if they are able to offer some additional suggestions, please feel free to use this form to submit your case. 

Just ran into this issue in a single text box on the feedback layers of one slide -- really odd that something like this only happens once in 30 screen project. 

Hi Michael,

Thanks for sharing the image here - as mentioned above it has been reported to our team although I don't have any updates to share. We have seen it connected more to specific letters such as how you've shown it with the w and i in order. 

Thanks Ashley, I appreciate the insight.

Hi -are there any updates on this issue? It is now a year old by the looks of this discussion.

I have encountered it when using Arial Bold at 20point. The text looks ok in Storyline but when published there is a large space after instances of lowercase 'm' 

Hi Liam,

Thanks for reaching out here - this issue is still with our QA team for review, so I don't have any additional information to share. We'll post information here once there is additional information to share. 

Hi - I would just like to add my voice to these comments about character spacing. This really needs to get fixed as our clients are complaining about this issue. It really is not good enough to wait this long for a fix.

Thanks Martin - and now you'll also be subscribed to the thread so that you can receive updates via email once we have information to share here.