patcher: Fontforge no longer recognizes mono fonts, `--mono` flag is now necessary for mono fonts

[acid-bong]

Requirements

• I have searched the issues for my issue and found nothing related or helpful
• I have searched the FAQ for help
• I have checked the Wiki for help

Experienced Behavior

Since that Fontforge release (and a bump in Nixpkgs), my custom build of Input Mono was all messed up (fig. 1, left window). Having a look in Font-manager, I also noticed that glyphs weren't aligned properly (fig. 1, right window).

My font recipe: https://codeberg.org/acidbong/nixos/src/commit/c0ed96ee65498deab006f3093993ac0afaff9455/pkgs/input/default.nix#L49-L51

# fd -ettf . $src/Input_Fonts/InputMono/InputMonoNarrow -X \
nerd-font-patcher --name postscript --makegroups -1 \
  --powerline --powerlineextra \
  -out "$newDir" "$font"

The solution? explicitly add --mono flag. It seems that Fontforge (or at least the interface that the script is using) no longer automatically recognizes monospace fonts.

What i'm asking here is to acknowledge this change somewhere in the docs/release-notes/Patcher's help output.

Expected Behavior

Figure 2

Example Symbols or Text

No response

Font Used

No response

Source of Font File

No response

Terminal Emulator (and the title of the terminal window)

No response

Operating System and Version

No response

Screenshots

[bgraw3]

i was just trying to figure out why the input font was problematic and --mono solved it. thanks.

[Finii]

But adding --mono create a completely different font than not giving that flag. The added icons are much smaller.

Without Input Mono at hand and yet no time to see if the newest FF really changed some behavior I would rather add --cell to get the same font as before. Use --dry --cell '?' with an old FF or on a previously patched Input Mono that works and then use the numbers reported in the new patch runs.

$ fontforge font-patcher --dry --cell '?' old-font.ttf
...
INFO: Cell coordinates (Xmin:Xmax:Ymin:Ymax) 0:1200:-480:1900
...
$ fontforge font-patcher --cell '0:1200:-480:1900' some-font.ttf
...

[Finii]

See also https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/wiki/ScriptOptions

Of course I need to check the new FF release, but ... time ... 😭

[acid-bong]

But adding --mono create a completely different font than not giving that flag. The added icons are much smaller.

ah, fair enough. I'm only patching Input with Powerline symbols (and angle brackets are added by default anyway) and use the rest from Symbols Nerd Font, so I didn't notice

[acid-bong]

fontforge font-patcher --cell '0:1200:-480:1900' some-font.ttf

doesn't work btw: left is --mono, right is --cell "0:662:-300:1020" (Input's vanilla cell size)

[Finii]

Thank you for trying this.
This looks like the advance width becomes zero.
Very strange.
I need to check...

[fbrosda]

Noticed the same issue, after the upgrade of the corresponding Arch package and thought I can help, by doing a git bisect of the issue. But I noticed, that the result was broken with both the 3.4.0 version and the 3.2.1 version, which when previously installed worked fine.

Then I downgraded fontforge, which was also updated just recently (https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/releases) to the previous release from 2023. With that version, the font looks good, even when using the 3.4.0 release here.

Maybe this makes it easier for you to pin down the actual problem.

[acid-bong]

Nerd patcher was 3.4.0 for me both before and after the Fontforge update, and it was the FF update that coincided with the patching breakage, hence I'm blaming it on FF