Hey folks, I’ve discovered a pretty weird bug that I can’t find anyone else talking about.
If I open the font menu, only a handful of fonts appear, and the rest of the entries are present but blank. If I scroll away and then back, ALL the entries except my currently selected font have become blank. Exiting this menu usually results in all of the text in the binder disappearing so that only the icons remain. In that case, I alt+F4 Scrivener as a sort of fight-or-flight reflex. When I open it back up, the binder is back to normal, but a seemingly random assortment of characters has disappeared from the toolbar and all menus. Panic-close the program again, re-open it again, and everything is fine. So I need to close and reopen Scrivener twice to resolve the problem.
I’m able to replicate it consistently and I’ve got screenshots - I can’t embed them in a new topic but I’ll put 'em up here one way or another.
I have Scrivener 3.1.1 on Windows 10 Pro v1903 build 18362.1256. I often have other programs running at the same time - usually Chrome, Firefox, Voicemeeter, MediaMonkey, and/or Notepad ++ - but nothing I’d expect to cause a problem. I haven’t been using Scrivener long so my projects aren’t huge. I do happily dig through and mess with system files and the registry and such in the interest of customization, so it could be related to something there, but I can’t say I’ve ever done much with anything font-related.
Forum won’t let me post screenshots or links for some ungodly reason, but if you go to imgur and append
/a/QmW4r2i after the .com, I uploaded them there.
I know this won’t exactly help you, although it may remove some possibilities and suggest others. I use 3.1.1 on Windows 10 Home and I have just checked my fonts in three ways: Ctl-T, selecting a word and the right clicking, and by clicking the drop down on the tool bar.
Each of these shows me all my fonts, including the ones I have installed myself from Google Fonts or similar. Selecting a font and applying it to a selection works as expected. I have a lot of other applications open right now including Firefox, FreeCommander, Joplin, Mailbird, and Zotero.
So it does not appear to be a universal bug but rather something specific to your set-up: either the set up of Scrivener or your system customisations.
For reasons unknown to science it never occurred to me to change the font from the Ctrl+T fonts menu. That interface works for changing the font, and the previews in that one window show up correctly as well. So thank you for that tip!
If I open the preferences menu [Ctrl + , ] > Editing > Formatting, though, and open that dropdown, the same vanishing problem happens, again requiring two relaunches. Seems like that dropdown menu interface specifically must have something to do with it.
My guess would be it is struggling with one or more of the fonts you have installed. This isn’t a universal problem, as noted above, and seems to be configuration related. If you do decide to experiment a bit along those lines, and find the font that is causing problems, let us know which it is, maybe sending in a copy of the font. Maybe we can work around the problem.
By the way, Ctrl+T works from most contexts where you can change fonts, like in Project Settings and Editing: Formatting. I think the one blind spot at the moment is still in the Styles compile format pane. I generally prefer that interface anyway, as it is more keyboard friendly and allows one to select multiple attributes at once rather than picking through sequential menus. Plus, I’ve never been fond of having to squint around live-previewed font names in a list. I get the appeal, in an abstract sense, but it’s not for me. I usually know what I want and am not browsing.