Re: [ft-devel] freetype crashes in Mac OS X

[Tim Lyons]

mpsuzuki and Ryan,

Thank you so much for your help in tracking this down. My previous  
suspicion is incorrect, it was not due to LucidaGrande.

I believe I have now tracked down the problem, and I think it is due  
to a peculiar font file, but was masked by a build discrepancy.

I had built freetype without any parameters to configure, with the  
consequence that the compile parameters were:
-c -Wall -g -O2 -DFT_CONFIG_OPTION_SYSTEM_ZLIB -DDARWIN_NO_CARBON - 
DFT_CONFIG_CONFIG_H="<ftconfig.h>" -DFT2_BUILD_LIBRARY - 
DFT_CONFIG_MODULES_H="<ftmodule.h>"

This worked even with the funny font.

MacPorts ran configure with:
org_release_ports_print_freetype/work/freetype-2.3.5" && ./configure  
--prefix=/opt/local --with-old-mac-fonts'
with the result that the compilation options were:
-c  -O2 -DFT_CONFIG_OPTION_SYSTEM_ZLIB -DHAVE_ANSI_OS_INLINE=1 - 
DFT_CONFIG_CONFIG_H="<ftconfig.h>" -DFT2_BUILD_LIBRARY - 
DFT_CONFIG_MODULES_H="<ftmodule.h>"
which resulted in scanning many more fonts (this mislead me in my  
previous diagnosis) and crashed on the peculiar font file.

__Should I be using --with-old-fonts on Mac OS X 10 with PPC G5?__
I don't understand what I should be doing from the various read-me  
files.

I have rebuilt freetype with --with-old-mac-fonts, and -g, and rerun  
the application. (I was previously mislead because the working run  
only looked at one font in most of the font files, while the failing  
one looks at many more fonts per file). It now crashes as follows:

FT_New_Face /Library/Fonts/MshtakanOblique.ttf
FT_New_Face /Library/Fonts/MshtakanRegular.ttf
FT_New_Face /Library/Fonts/N Helvetica Narrow
FT_New_Face /Library/Fonts/N Helvetica Narrow

Program received signal EXC_BAD_ACCESS, Could not access memory.
Reason: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at address: 0x00000000
FT_New_Face_From_FOND (library=0x306af20, fond=0x0, face_index=0,  
aface=0xbfffbbe8) at /Users/tim/Downloads/freetype-2.3.5copy/src/base/ 
ftmac.c:818
818         ft_memcpy( sfnt_data, *sfnt, sfnt_size );
(gdb)

I removed this font (actually two font files, one normal and one  
bold), and the application worked OK.

Font Book says the following about the  font:

Helvetica Narrow
Helvetica Narrow, 18 pt.

        PostScript name Helvetica-Narrow
        Full name       Helvetica Narrow
        Family  Helvetica
        Style   Narrow
        Kind    TrueType
	Language	English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Finnish,  
Portuguese, Swedish
        Version 1.1
        Location        /Library/Fonts/N Helvetica Narrow
        Unique name     Apple Computer Helvetica Narrow
	Copyright	Copyright © 1992 Linotype Hell/Apple Computer Inc./Type  
Solutions, Inc.
        Trademark       Helvetica is a registered trademark of Linotype AG
        Enabled Yes
        Duplicate       Yes


Fontbook displays the font OK.

Finder get info says this is a Font.mdimporter Document. Double  
clicking on it opens OS 9, but then this says FontUpdater could not  
be found.

I don't know where this font came from, but think it may be from the  
Apple Laserwriter in OS 7. There is another version of the font which  
is a font suitcase which works OK.

The ironic thing is that all this scanning of all the font files is  
actually a waste of time, because the application probably only uses  
a single font - anyway there does not seem to be any way to choose  
different fonts!, and even more ironic, once the scan has been done  
once, the information is cached, and the scan is not repeated.

regards,
Tim Lyons.