Storyline 2 - character spacing problem

Nardiah,

I can tell you that Articulate is working very hard on it and I believe that there will be a solution very soon. For more information you should contact Simon Taghioff. He has posted in the thread.

This continues to be a problem for me and we use a variety of fonts.  The issue is that it happens randomly, no pattern.  Would love to know when this will be resolved...and I'm curious as to what is causing this.  Thanks!

Belen,

I have been very vocal about this problem and can tell you Articulate has been very hard at work on it and I hope the solution will be out soon. I have seen what has been done to fix this and it does work. Please contact Simon for further information.

Sindy - thanks for bringing the question up. There are more of us who follow this thread and area also still curious.

Personally, I'm glad people ask about status once in a while. As a several-years-old-thread any additional voice on the issue may help push this up as a priority when it falls to something else.

Brian - I'm not sure many of us have been so lucky to have insight into the progress of the font rendering engine and there is genuine need for the fix and curiosity about when it will be resolved. Since this has been ongoing, and folks are still posting, it would be nice (and likely prevent the new posts) if there was some intermittent communication from Articulate staff about where they are on the issue -- and perhaps they could share in a video with more folks the insight you have about so the new font engine works.

I wonder if it's Articulate' s position to have everyone with a technical question reach out to Simon directly, bypassing posting on the community. 

Hi Lisa,

I promised an update to this group once we had a better idea of how things were progressing in Beta.

As we’ve dug deeper into the work (and through the Beta process), it’s become clear to us that the true scope of this feature is far broader than we’d originally anticipated.

While the additional work has pushed out our schedule (we eventually went to Beta early last month), it means that we’ve been able to make many more improvements to the way Storyline renders text above and beyond addressing the character spacing concerns raised in this thread.

The good news is that it seems the extra effort has been worth it. Text simply looks and flows much better in almost every font and context, and what you see on the stage is now virtually identical to what you’ll see during playback. We handle fonts with multiple weights much more intelligently than before and are making improvements to the way we handle text entered into form fields or displayed using variables. The work amounts to an entirely new text rendering engine for Storyline – we’re calling it ‘Modern Text’.

We’re currently working on implementing the remaining feedback we’ve received from the beta process and are on course to release the feature during Q1.

We'll keep a close eye on this thread in the meantime, and I'll be happy to answer further questions folks might have.

- Simon

So does this mean a fix will be available to Storyline 2 users? Thanks Simon, this is great news!

Adding my name to the list of users experiencing this issue from 3 years ago. As with Terry above I hope the fix will be available to SL2 users like me.

Hi Terry and Tim, 

The changes Simon referenced will only be available in Storyline 3 and Storyline 360.

This is based on the changes we're making to how text is laid out on the slide and the new tech options that weren't available when Storyline 2 was created. If you need to look at upgrading your courses to Storyline 3 or 360, there are discounts available based on your existing Storyline 2 license and our Sales team is happy to walk you through all those. 

As Simon mentioned it'll be available in Q1 so you'll be able to take a look in a trial of Articulate 360 here! 

Hi Simon, 

I just wanted to tell you I greatly appreciate your response. I found the detail enlightening in understanding where you've been, some of the challenges, and where you are now. It's the type of communication that I (and I suspect most folks who are running into some issues) find extremely helpful in our planning and our communication with our clients, users and teams.

I'm super excited to hand off a course knowing I don't have to respond to things like "there's an extra space between the X and Y." :).

Thank you again for taking the time to jump in and update.

Best,
Lisa

Hmm - I wonder if m clients who had to put up with not having their
corporate font used due to the spacing issue ( as posted last year in this
thread) in the Storyline courses will be happy to pay for us to re-pub in
Storyline 3 and test them all again...

Hey All,

I am not sure if anyone has offered this as a work around, but I just found that if I set my character spacing to .1 points condensed, the text renders correctly and there is no noticeable condensing.  For some reason it does not work when I try .1 points expanded.

Hope that helps.

Hey folks,

Great news! We’ve just released an update to Storyline 360 which addresses the issues raised on this thread.

As we investigated, we realized there was an opportunity to make far broader improvements to the way Storyline renders text. The result is a brand new text rendering engine for Storyline – we call it Modern Text.

Once you have the update installed, new projects will use Modern Text by default. To use Modern Text with an existing project, you’ll have to switch it on in the Fonts menu under the ‘Design’ ribbon tab.

Text now looks beautiful and flows naturally wherever it’s used. What you see on the stage is what you’ll see in the finished output. We intelligently choose the best font to use where multiple fonts in the same family are available. Finally, text in input fields or variable %referenced% text will now always use the correct font when you publish as HTML5.

This has been a massive undertaking that’s touched almost every part of Storyline that uses text.

We appreciate your patience while we’ve been through this process and hope that you’ll agree the final result has been worth the wait.

The update is available today for Storyline 360 customers. We’ll also be releasing this as a free update for Storyline 3 customers in the coming weeks, and will make sure we let you know as soon as it’s available.

Thanks again,

- Simon

Hi Simon,

Thanks for letting us know about the new release.

Since the update I've noticed some issues with variable references not behaving as desired. I've created a separate post for this here but thought you'd be grateful of the feedback.

Hi David,

We'll take a look at your other post and follow up with you there! 

Hi There,

Font rendering issue still exists in storyline 3. We tried 5 different fonts including Articulate. We are using Articulate Storyline 3, update 2.  Please find attached screenshot for reference. 

I would really appreciate if staff member can help us to fix this issue ASAP.

Hi Payal, 

We recently release modern text rendering for Storyline 360, and you can read a bit more about that here!  That feature will also be in the next update of Storyline 3, so we'll let you know here once that is ready. 

My Storyline 3 clients are still waiting for this fix for their courses.  When will the patch for SL3 be released?  

Hi Fraser,

The next Storyline 3 update is going through some final tests and tweaks - so we hope to ship it in the coming weeks. We'll let you know once it's ready! 

Hello everyone!

I wanted to pop in to let you know that Update 3 for Storyline 3 has now been released. Download the latest update here.

I think you'd be most interested in this new feature:

• The new text-rendering engine for Storyline 3 allows text to flow beautifully with consistent spacing and readability on every device. And learners will always see the correct fonts for variable references and data-entry fields in HTML5 output. Learn more about modern text.

Let us know what you think!

Hello,

Can you make this feature available also for Storyline 2?

Hi Udi,

This change to allow for modern text is available only in Storyline 3 or Storyline 360 (as a part of Articulate 360). 

If you need to discuss upgrade options and pricing, our Sales team is happy to help. 

Ashley,

I believe this bug is significant enough for Articulate to grant me a free upgrade from Storyline 2 to 3. If your Sales team think the same they are welcome to contact me.

Is this still an open issue? I see this post was opened 3 years ago? I am still experiencing this issue when using Arial. What is the resolution for this?