Vember Audio Surge is now open-source

[Shabdahbriah]

Surge currently uses Lato for everything and it's sadly not that easy to change that.

Cool, thanks... curiously, the lowercase a and e in lato really bug me visually, particularly the 'a', note how squished the 'closed-circular' (for lack of knowing the real term) part is here, versus in the image which was posted by ENVI.

lato.png

[ENV1]

As you can see on the screenshot below, the font that is used by the 'label text' definitions totally sucks. (Must be Verdana or Tahoma or something.)

What IS the text used for 'Oscillators', please?

4-FONT_surge_oscbit.png

Good question, i still dont know.

However, after a quick visual comparison it seems to me that it is actually Segoe UI, which is a standard Windows font and also happens to be the default font used by Windows from i guess Vista onwards.

[EvilDragon]

Yeah if Lato for whatever reason is not installed (which is hard since Surge installer does it for quite some time now), it will fallback to one of system fonts, I think in code it mentions Arial, Segoe UI and Tahoma.

[ENV1]

Yeah, and that was the case. (Lato was present in the Fonts folder but for some reason it wasnt used in the sandbox i was working in, hence Surge fell back to a system font.)

As to the fallback fonts themselves, im not familiar enough with the source code to know, but i do know that the DLL contains 3 font names, namely Arial, Microsoft Sans Serif and Lato. In other words Segoe UI does not occur, but im practically positive that this is what Surge used as a fallback simply because it is the only font installed on this machine that ticks all the boxes with respect to glyph details. (Also a direct comparison makes it pretty much doubtless. The image below shows Microsoft Paint on top, PS in the center, and Surge at the bottom. They all render the font a bit differently, but i think there can be little doubt that what Surge uses is in fact the same font, i.e. Segoe UI.)

surge_fallbackfont.png

[Shabdahbriah]

Yeah, and that was the case. (Lato was present in the Fonts folder but for some reason it wasnt used in the sandbox i was working in, hence Surge fell back to a system font.)

As to the fallback fonts themselves, im not familiar enough with the source code to know, but i do know that the DLL contains 3 font names, namely Arial, Microsoft Sans Serif and Lato. In other words Segoe UI does not occur, but im practically positive that this is what Surge used as a fallback simply because it is the only font installed on this machine that ticks all the boxes with respect to glyph details. (Also a direct comparison makes it pretty much doubtless. The image below shows Microsoft Paint on top, PS in the center, and Surge at the bottom. They all render the font a bit differently, but i think there can be little doubt that what Surge uses is in fact the same font, i.e. Segoe UI.)


surge_fallbackfont.png

Awesome thank you both so much. I've spent quite some time searching and comparing all of the fonts mentioned, in order to respond to your previous response, and I concur with your observation/conclusion. Ironic (or poetic) that 'UI' is in the name of the Segoe font, as that is what I want it for. I noted some of the commentary about the font was negative for use in anything other than 'titles/headings' because of the amount of space between each letter. It's legibility because of that 'space', makes it perfect for what I intend, and being a system font will also aid in using it within Affinity Designer.

I'm designing new face-plates for a number of my eurorack modules, prompted mainly by a large number of the Lifeforms SV-1 fonts that are literally 1/32 inch tall. That's equivalent to typing words on the 'edge' of two credit cards stacked flat on each other, (with a hair or two to spare). Using a magnifying glass and flashlight when patching is really a pain, as is having to look at a large printed image, just to find the jack(s) I want to use, until I get the 'motor-memory' up to speed, which for me, is impaired considerably by that inconvenience/frustration.

Thank you again. I appreciate the effort.

AND ~ I just noticed Surge has been ported to VCV rack!!!

[The Nerdy Music Guy]

Using a microtonal patch I made for a weird soundscape. Just one instance of Surge, nothing else. All automation is done via the 8 macros.

https://soundcloud.com/user-589036812-2 ... -1-x-surge

[Halonmusic]

Wow instant Ambient there The Nerdy Music Guy! Love it

[baconpaul]

In other words Segoe UI does not occur, but im practically positive that this is what Surge used as a fallback simply because it is the only font installed on this machine that ticks all the boxes with respect to glyph details.

On windows the rough codepath is

- IDWriteFactory::CreateTextFormat
- IDWriteFont::GetFirstMatchingFont

so your thesis that absent Lato it would fall back using glyphs and metrics and stuff is correct, using whatever is available on your system. The Surge installer does install Lato on your system for you. The references to Arial etc.. are VSTGUI global fonts we don't use.

If anyone here is a Windows C++ programmer and can tell me how to load a D2D font from a TTF file on the file system, that would be super helpful....

AND ~ I just noticed Surge has been ported to VCV rack!!!

Indeed it has! But we used https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Encode+Sans Encode Sans for that port!

[baconpaul]

(deleted as dup)

[The Nerdy Music Guy]

Here are some Surge drum machine like sounds with just a little bit of limiting from LoudMax on the master (the "side chaining" was done using simple volume automation):

https://soundcloud.com/user-589036812-2 ... e-limiting

[onerob]

That's pretty cool.

[The Nerdy Music Guy]

Yeah, Surge is really, really good for drums, in my opinion

[The Nerdy Music Guy]

Just one instance of Surge doing something strange! There is a lot going on here. Surge is amazing at this kind of complex, evolving stuff.

https://soundcloud.com/user-589036812-2 ... -1-x-surge

[Shabdahbriah]

In other words Segoe UI does not occur, but im practically positive that this is what Surge used as a fallback simply because it is the only font installed on this machine that ticks all the boxes with respect to glyph details.

On windows the rough codepath is

- IDWriteFactory::CreateTextFormat
- IDWriteFont::GetFirstMatchingFont

so your thesis that absent Lato it would fall back using glyphs and metrics and stuff is correct, using whatever is available on your system. The Surge installer does install Lato on your system for you. The references to Arial etc.. are VSTGUI global fonts we don't use.

If anyone here is a Windows C++ programmer and can tell me how to load a D2D font from a TTF file on the file system, that would be super helpful....

AND ~ I just noticed Surge has been ported to VCV rack!!!

Indeed it has! But we used https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Encode+Sans Encode Sans for that port!

That you for the clarification. And kudos to whoever wrote the online manual for the VCV modules, it rocks. Love the layout and concise but informative nature of it. Very dyslexic friendly.

[The Nerdy Music Guy]

Something weird again:

https://soundcloud.com/user-589036812-2 ... -1-x-surge