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Compare the managed font reader with GDI on Windows and fix the differences (#412, step 6) - #472

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Oct 19, 2026
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@dsn27 dsn27 commented Oct 15, 2026

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Part of #412, step 6 (fonts). This PR is stacked on #471 (variable fonts), so its base is feature/variable-fonts. It will be retargeted once #471 is merged.

The comparison

GdiFontComparisonTests (Windows only, #if WINDOWS) compares the ManagedFontProvider with GDI, which is how CADability got its fonts before #412.

Test What it compares
TheManagedProviderKnowsAllFamiliesOfGdi Every family name that GDI+ lists must resolve to a managed face, including names that GDI cuts to 31 characters.
FacesMatchGdi 12 common fonts in every real style, covering TrueType, a collection (Cambria), variable fonts (Bahnschrift, Segoe UI Variable) and a STAT-named instance.
AllInstalledFontsMatchGdi All installed families (131 on the runner), with fewer characters.

FacesMatchGdi checks the metrics, the advance widths, the outlines and the underline and strikeout lines. AllInstalledFontsMatchGdi checks the metrics, the advance widths and a few outlines.

The references and tolerances:

  • Metrics: the values of GDI+, exactly.
  • Advance widths: GetCharABCWidths, within 1 font unit.
  • Underline and strikeout: the last figure of GraphicsPath.AddString, within 2 font units.
  • Outlines: GDI's unhinted outlines (GetGlyphOutline with GGO_NATIVE | GGO_UNHINTED), Hausdorff distance within 2 font units.

GDI+ is not the reference for the outlines because AddString returns hinted outlines. In strongly hinted fonts these differ from the design by a few font units, for example 17 units for '2' in Calibri and 42 for 'g' in Constantia. For Segoe Script they are simply wrong, up to 641 units. The managed reader matches the unhinted outlines exactly, with a distance of 0 in every case checked.

What the first Windows run found, and the fixes

The causes were confirmed against the raw font tables with a throwaway diagnostic program on the Windows runner (branch diag/gdi-fonts, not for merging):

  1. Family names cut to 31 characters. GDI cuts family names to 31 characters (LF_FACESIZE), e.g. "Bahnschrift SemiBold SemiConden", and texts saved with GDI keep that name. The managed provider now resolves such a name to the only family whose name starts with it.
  2. USE_TYPO_METRICS. When bit 7 of fsSelection is set, GDI+ takes the cell (ascent, descent) and the line spacing from the typographic metrics of OS/2, not from usWinAscent and usWinDescent. This affects Bahnschrift, Cascadia, Sitka, Cambria Math, Gabriola, Nirmala Text and Sans Serif Collection. This changes the line layout of texts in these fonts, to what GDI+ did before Get the fonts of texts from a font service of the kernel instead of GDI #468.
  3. Underline and strikeout positions. GDI+ centers both lines on the positions of post and OS/2. Before, they were drawn below those positions.
  4. The glyph origin. When the xMin of a glyph differs from its left side bearing in hmtx, Windows (and FreeType and fontTools) moves the outline so that the origin is at 0. This affects Times New Roman Italic and Symbol. A composite glyph with USE_MY_METRICS takes the origin of that component instead (Times New Roman Bold 'Ü'). The varied origin of a variable font is taken into account.
  5. Names of variable instances from STAT. Windows builds the names from the axis values in the axis ordering of STAT and leaves out the elidable ones. For example, the fvar instance "Light Display" of Segoe UI Variable becomes "Segoe UI Variable Display Light". Without a usable STAT table, the subfamily name of fvar is used as before.
  6. MVAR. It is now applied to the metrics of an instance: typographic and Windows ascent and descent, underline, and strikeout. Bahnschrift varies the size of its strikeout line this way. This removes the "MVAR is not applied" limitation of Read variable fonts: gvar, CFF2, avar and HVAR (#412, step 6) #471.

One case is a GDI artifact rather than a reader difference. With FW_NORMAL, GDI emboldens a lighter face such as the instance "Cascadia Code ExtraLight". The test therefore creates the GDI font with FW_DONTCARE for a regular face.

Tests on Linux

Each fix has a test that runs on every platform:

  • the origin, by patching the hmtx of Liberation Sans in memory;
  • USE_MY_METRICS, through Liberation Sans 'Ü';
  • USE_TYPO_METRICS, by patching fsSelection;
  • the centered underline;
  • the STAT ordering and elision, by patching the STAT of VarTestSans;
  • MVAR, against fontTools' instancer values, which were added to VarTestSans.reference.json by make_variable_test_fonts.py.

Mutation checks confirmed that these tests catch the following when they are switched off: the origin shift, USE_MY_METRICS, MVAR, the STAT ordering and the elision.

Results

  • Windows (diag/gdi-fonts run of this head): CADability.Tests 675 passed, 2 skipped, 0 failed. This includes the GDI comparison and the reference bitmaps.
  • Linux, local: CADability.Tests 651 passed, 12 skipped; CADability.ImportTests 88 passed. CADability.Forms builds.

The Windows CI job (#469) is not part of this stack, so this PR's own CI runs on Linux only. The integration draft #467 runs both.

No public API change. TrueTypeFont and FontVariations are internal.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5


Generated by Claude Code

claude added 10 commits October 15, 2026 08:04
First part of step 6 of #412. Text gets its glyphs from GDI today
(GraphicsPath.AddString, gdi32 for widths and kerning), which does not
exist outside Windows. The new internal class TrueTypeFont reads font
files itself:

- .ttf files and every font of a .ttc collection; CFF-based .otf and
  bitmap-only fonts are recognized and report HasTrueTypeOutlines=false
- glyph contours from glyf/loca with composite glyphs resolved (offsets,
  scales, 2x2 transforms, point matching)
- cmap formats 0, 4, 6 and 12, including symbol fonts
- advance widths (hmtx), metrics (head, hhea, OS/2) and names (name)
- kerning pairs of the version 0 kern table, as GDI reads them
- GetPathData returns the outline in the layout of a GDI+ GraphicsPath
  after AddString, so GlyphShapeBuilder.PathDataToPath2D can take it
  unchanged; the quadratic segments become cubic ones by exact degree
  elevation

Nothing uses it yet: the font service that replaces GDI in Text and
FontCache follows in the next pull request.

The tests compare names, metrics, glyph indices, advance widths, all
contours of 112 characters and the kerning with reference data that
fontTools wrote from the same font (Liberation Sans, SIL OFL 1.1, added
under tests/CADability.Tests/Files/Fonts together with the script that
wrote the reference). They also check that the outline is exactly the
quadratic curves, a font collection, and invalid input.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
…DI (#412)

Second part of step 6 of #412. Text and FontCache no longer use GDI or
GDI+: the glyph outlines, advance widths, kerning, metrics and the list
of font families come from the static, settable FontProvider.Current,
not from FrameImpl.MainFrame, so texts work without a frame and on
every platform.

- FontProvider and FontFace (public, new) describe what the kernel
  needs. A face returns its glyphs as Bezier path data in the layout of
  GraphicsPath.AddString, which the kernel turns into geometry with
  GlyphShapeBuilder as before, so no provider can flatten the outlines.
- ManagedFontProvider (public, new) is the default on all platforms,
  as decided for #412. It indexes the TrueType fonts of the system font
  directories by reading only their header tables, and loads a font
  file when a face is used. Files and font data can be added.
- FontCache no longer creates a GDI device context in its constructor
  or deletes it in a finalizer, which ended the process outside Windows.
- Without any font, painting and the extent of a text leave it out;
  GetOutline and similar explicit requests throw an
  InvalidOperationException that says what to do.
- ShowPropertyFont and DimensionStyle list the families of the provider.
- CADability.Forms.GdiFontProvider (public, new) is the old GDI
  implementation for applications that want it.

TrueTypeFont reads the underline and strikeout metrics, adds both as
rectangles like GDI+ does, and can read only the header tables of a
font file.

Tests: both test projects register Liberation Sans in an assembly
initializer, so texts have a font even on a machine without fonts. The
text tests that were inconclusive on Linux ("text needs GDI") now run
there; new FontProviderTests cover text without a frame, the default
face for unknown fonts, the exception without fonts, underline and
strikeout, style fallback, header-only reading and the finalizer.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
)

Step 6, part 2b of #412. The managed reader of #466 skipped OpenType
fonts with CFF outlines, which many .otf files have, so a text in such
a font fell back to the default face. The new internal CffOutlines
reads the "CFF " table:

- INDEX and DICT structures, the FontMatrix (which is stored rounded,
  e.g. 0.00048828 for 1/2048)
- the Type 2 charstring interpreter: all path operators including the
  specialized curves and lines, flex, hflex, hflex1, flex1, local and
  global subroutines with their bias, widths, hints and hint masks
  (skipped, they do not change the outline), the arithmetic operators
- CID-keyed fonts with FDArray and FDSelect (formats 0 and 3)

The cubic curves go into the GDI+ path data unchanged. Not supported:
CFF2 (variable OpenType fonts) and the deprecated accent composition of
endchar (seac). TrueTypeFont gets HasCffOutlines and HasOutlines, and
ManagedFontProvider indexes .otf and .otc files too.

Tests: make_cff_test_fonts.py makes two small test fonts from a subset
of Inter (SIL OFL 1.1): InterCffTest.otf rewritten to use subroutines,
the specialized operators, flex and hint masks, and InterCidTest.otf,
the same glyphs as a CID-keyed font with two font dicts. The outlines
of both are compared command by command with fontTools. Checked
locally against fontTools on 18,672 glyphs of the 47 CFF fonts of the
Linux container, 7 of them CID-keyed: all equal.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
The managed font reader now handles variable OpenType fonts. The named
instances of a variable font become faces of their own, with family names
as GDI makes them ("Bahnschrift Light Condensed", "Segoe UI Variable
Display Semibold"), so these fonts no longer fall back to their default
instance or, for CFF2, disappear from the font list.

- FontVariations parses fvar, avar, the gvar header and HVAR, normalizes
  user coordinates and computes tuple scalars like fontTools'
  supportScalar (peak and intermediate regions).
- TrueType outlines: gvar deltas with shared and private point numbers,
  packed deltas, interpolation of untouched points (IUP), phantom points
  and the offsets of composite components.
- CFF2 outlines: 32-bit INDEX counts, the Top DICT outside an INDEX,
  FDSelect format 4, vsindex and blend with the ItemVariationStore.
- Advance widths come from HVAR, or from the phantom points without HVAR.
  They are not rounded. MVAR is not applied.

The test fonts are subsets of Source Sans 3 VF (OFL-1.1), renamed to
"VarTest Sans" because "Source" is a Reserved Font Name. Their reference
outlines and advance widths were written with fontTools.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
GdiFontComparisonTests checks on the fonts installed on Windows that the
ManagedFontProvider, the default since the font service, gives the same
results as the GdiFontProvider, which is how CADability got its fonts
before:

- every family GDI+ knows is known to the managed provider;
- for a list of common fonts (TrueType, a collection and variable fonts),
  in every real style: the metrics, the advance widths (within one font
  unit) and the outlines (Hausdorff distance within two font units),
  including underline and strikeout;
- for all installed families: the metrics, the advance widths and the
  outlines of a few characters.

The tests only compile for net8.0-windows and run in the Windows CI.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
GDI cuts family names to 31 characters (LF_FACESIZE), e.g. "Bahnschrift
SemiBold SemiConden", and texts saved with GDI keep that name. The
ManagedFontProvider now resolves such a name to the only family whose
name starts with it. The comparison with GDI checks that every family
name of GDI resolves to a face.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
The comparison with GDI on Windows found three differences, which a
diagnostic run confirmed against the raw font tables:

- Fonts that set USE_TYPO_METRICS (bit 7 of fsSelection) get their cell
  and line spacing from the typographic metrics of OS/2 in GDI+, not from
  usWinAscent and usWinDescent (Bahnschrift, Cascadia, Sitka, Cambria
  Math, Gabriola, Nirmala Text).
- GDI+ centers the underline and the strikeout line on the positions of
  "post" and "OS/2"; they were drawn below them.
- When xMin of a glyph is not its left side bearing in "hmtx", Windows,
  FreeType and fontTools move the outline so that the origin is at 0
  (Times New Roman Italic, Symbol). The varied origin of a variable font
  is taken into account.

The Windows test now compares the outlines with the unhinted outlines of
GDI (GetGlyphOutline with GGO_UNHINTED): GraphicsPath.AddString returns
hinted outlines, which differ from the design by a few font units in
strongly hinted fonts and are wrong for Segoe Script, while the managed
reader matches the unhinted outlines exactly. The underline and strikeout
lines are still compared with GDI+.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
The comparison with GDI on Windows found more differences:

- Windows names the instances of a variable font from "STAT": the names
  of the axis values in the axis ordering of "STAT", without the elidable
  ones. Segoe UI Variable has the instance "Light Display" in "fvar",
  which Windows calls "Segoe UI Variable Display Light". Without a usable
  "STAT" table the subfamily name of "fvar" is used as before.
- "MVAR" is now applied to the metrics of an instance (typographic and
  Windows ascent and descent, underline, strikeout). Bahnschrift varies
  the size of its strikeout line.
- A composite glyph with USE_MY_METRICS takes its origin from that
  component (Times New Roman Bold 'Ü').

The Windows test creates the GDI font with FW_DONTCARE for a regular
face, because FW_NORMAL makes GDI embolden a lighter face such as
"Cascadia Code ExtraLight".

The strikeout values of the variable test fonts at their instances were
added to the reference data with fontTools' instancer.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
Resolves the conflict with #497 in FontCache: the managed font calls of
this branch now run under the same lock (this) that #497 introduced, and
Clear disposes the glyph display lists and empties all caches, including
the faces. FontProvider.Current, which calls Clear, documents that the
display lists of the views need to be rebuilt when it is set after texts
were painted.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
claude added 10 commits October 17, 2026 08:50
ClearingTheFontCacheDisposesTheGlyphLists reflected on the 'kerning' field
of the GDI FontCache, which this branch replaces by the 'faces' of
FontProvider.Current, so it failed with a NullReferenceException on
Windows. It now checks that Clear empties the faces, and it runs on every
platform, because the font cache no longer needs GDI.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
FontFace.GetAdvanceWidth, GetKerning and GetGlyphPath took a char, a UTF-16
code unit. A character outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, e.g. most emoji,
is a surrogate pair of two chars in a string, so it could never reach a font:
the text went through the font char by char. They now take a code point
(int). FontFace is new public API of this PR, so this is the time to change
it; after a release, every custom font provider would break.

- Text and FontCache go through the text as code points (Text.CodePoints):
  a surrogate pair is one character, a lone surrogate stays the char it is.
- The managed face passes the code point on to the cmap, which already
  supports format 12.
- The GDI face measures a character beyond U+FFFF with
  GetTextExtentPoint32, because GetCharABCWidths only takes UTF-16 chars,
  and reads the kerning pairs as unsigned values.

The new FontCodePointTests check with a recording font provider that "a",
an emoji and "b" reach the font as three characters, with their widths,
kerning and outlines; they fail when the surrogate pair is not combined.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
With StepImport.Parallel, CreateEntity runs on several threads, but it added
mapped items to the HashSet mappedItems and, for assemblies, products to the
HashSet products without a lock (the other place that adds products locks
it). Concurrent Add calls can corrupt a HashSet, and the enumeration of
mappedItems after the creation then met a null entry: a
NullReferenceException in ImportStep.Read.

StepCyclicReferenceTest from #498 imports a file with mapped items 20 times
in parallel and showed this now and then on the 2-core CI runner. With the
test process limited to 2 cores, it failed 3 of 30 times without this change
and 0 of 60 times with it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
(cherry picked from commit 85e21f1)

dsn27 commented Oct 19, 2026

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The Linux job on 23aa919e failed in CADability.ImportTests, in StepCyclicReferenceTest.import_step_with_representations_that_map_each_other, with a NullReferenceException in ImportStep.Read. The same failure appeared on #468 before.

This failure is not caused by this PR. The parallel STEP import added to the HashSets mappedItems and products from several threads without a lock. The test from #498 imports a file with mapped items 20 times in parallel, and that exposes the race. With the test process limited to 2 cores, the test failed 3 of 30 times without a lock and 0 of 60 times with one.

The fix is #499, against master. I cherry-picked it into the bases of both stacks, #466 and #473, and merged it up through #468, #470, #471, #472 and #479, and through #474 and #480. Once #499 is on master, the change is a no-op in these branches.


Generated by Claude Code

With #468 the texts get their fonts from FontProvider.Current, which is the
managed TrueType reader on every platform. To keep the texts of existing
Windows Forms applications exactly as before, CADability.Forms now makes its
GdiFontProvider the default as soon as one of its main classes is used
(CadControl, CadCanvas, CadFrame, PaintToOpenGL, PaintToGDI): their static
constructors call GdiFontProvider.MakeDefault.

The kernel keeps the managed provider as its own default, so nothing changes
for applications without CADability.Forms (the browser, other platforms,
renderers of their own). A provider the application sets through
FontProvider.Current is kept, whether it is set before or after
CADability.Forms is loaded, so an application can still choose the managed
provider on Windows.

FontProvider tells the two cases apart: the setter marks the provider as the
application's choice, the new internal FontProvider.SetDefault replaces only
a default. CADability.Forms reaches it through InternalsVisibleTo, so there
is no new public API.

Refs #412


Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5

Co-authored-by: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Base automatically changed from feature/variable-fonts to master October 19, 2026 10:52
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YXvDW91oXpy7RquGHNxgR5
@dsn27
dsn27 merged commit 86fd6be into master Oct 19, 2026
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@dsn27
dsn27 deleted the feature/gdi-glyph-comparison branch October 19, 2026 11:00
@dsn27 dsn27 mentioned this pull request Oct 19, 2026
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