Unable to load font multiple times

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The following program throws this error after about 70 loops.

main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback:

local font   for i = 1, 200 do print(i) font = TTFont.new("foo.ttf", i) end

My game requires loading font multiple times. Is this a bug or my error?

Teranth

It would seem that there is some-kind of error-possible the file is locked by being open at the same time too many times, it might be in the OS.

Anyway way don't you just load all your fonts into globals at runtime and just access them?

_G["font1"] = TTFont.new("font1.ttf, 1)
_G["font2"] = TTFont.new("font2.ttf, 2)
etc..

Just an option.

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Hmm, yeah. I was thinking of doing that. I'm probably using 5-6 different sizes of fonts.

Just wanted to know why this was throwing an error.

Also, if I were using 70 sizes, wouldn't that also throw an error?

Teranth

While I am not an expert at the low level IO on iOS/Android, my guess is your loop is using up all the available file handles in the system, since it is looping fast and loading them all from the files.

Another option might be to create BitmapFonts instead of using the TTF files and load them into texture memory and access them that way--you can of course also scale then instead of directly using different font sizes I would suppose.

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Also, forgot to mention, my real game doesn't do this. It's loading fonts after several seconds, and still throws that error on around ~ 10 loads. This was just a reduced test case.

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Another option might be to create BitmapFonts instead of using the TTF files and load them into texture memory and access them that way--you can of course also scale then instead of directly using different font sizes I would suppose.

Do BitmapFont's scale method scale fonts perfectly? No pixelation?

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Ok, now this is weird. I ran the program a few times. Here's the output.

Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 5 6 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 5 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 4 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 3 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: Uploading finished. 1 2 main.lua:5: foo.ttf: No such file or directory. stack traceback: foo.ttf is uploading. main.lua is uploading. Uploading finished.

It's like the program is "running out of fonts" after every start. The program crashed every time, except the last. Gideros Player crashed on the last try.

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Aand it's gone.

Started Player again, runs upto 200 fine. Tried about 10 times.

But I did restart the player yesterday too, it was still giving the errors.

talis

Weird really, just to stress test i run this code many times in my player and no errors. All prints are perfect. I will continue to test with it if i will receive any error i will inform here.

local font,font2,font3,font4   for i = 1, 2000 do print(i) font = TTFont.new("Roboto-Regular.ttf", i) font2 = TTFont.new("Turkish_Times_New_Roman.ttf", i) font3 = TTFont.new("Roboto-Regular.ttf", i) font4 = TTFont.new("Turkish_Times_New_Roman.ttf", i) end

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Started again for me. Runs upto 202 now. Then 201. Then 200. Then 199, and so on.

Something is definitely wrong.

talis

@___ i agree after this post i increased my stress tests counter to 5000 and runs more than 10 times and no errors at all. Maybe something wrong with the ttf font it self or the folder that it is staying?

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Nope, not a font problem.

Just downloaded PT Sans from http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/PT-Sans , and used PTC55F.ttf

First run - 181, second run - 180, third run - 179, ...

And the folder is the root folder in this test, and /resources/fonts/ in my real game. So can't be that either.

talis

did you try it in real device? for exaple make a button and try many times? Maybe it is player problem only? Because as i said i tried in my gideros studio many times i am not receiving any errors? Maybe you have some extra code, if you send me your project i can try it.

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Absolutely no other code.

➜ font-bug-test ls PTC55F.ttf font-bug-test.gproj main.lua ➜ font-bug-test cat font-bug-test.gproj <project> <properties autorotation="0" fps="60" scaleMode="0" iosDevice="0" xcodeVersion="0" packageName="com.yourdomain.yourapp" logicalHeight="480" logicalWidth="320" retinaDisplay="0" assetsOnly="0" orientation="0" architecture="0"> <imageScales/> </properties> <file source="PTC55F.ttf"/> <file source="main.lua"/> </project> ➜ font-bug-test cat main.lua local font   for i = 1, 200 do print(i) font = TTFont.new("PTC55F.ttf", i) end

I can upload a zip if you still want, but the commands above show that those are the only files present.

My Apple dev account is pending approval, so I cannot test on a real device yet

Can you try increasing i's limit to maybe a million? See if it crashes anytime soon?

talis

ok now i am icreasing it hope my computer will survive:D

talis

@___
i make it 100000 and receive this error more than 2 times.(Can not check all it is so long:D)
main.lua:5: Roboto-Regular.ttf: Error while reading font file.
stack traceback:
main.lua:5: Roboto-Regular.ttf: Error while reading font file.
stack traceback:
It is weird from this test i understand that this error is generated randomly.

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Hmm, that's a different error than mine.

I got "No such file or directory."

atilim

There is definitely a bug here. Most probably, TTFont keeps the file open and OS run out of file handles when TTFont's aren't collected fast enough. I'll look at it and post an update here.

Thank you very much for detailed analysis

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@atilim

I don't think that would explain the fact that my game used to crash with the font just being loaded 10-12 times, with the exact same message? That too, with several seconds gap in between.

talis

@atilim thanks. Waiting to hear from you.

amnon

Had the same issue when loading a few TTFonts. Invoking collectgarbage("collect") every few TTFont.new seems to solve it. Not elegant, but works.

SinisterSoft

That's Lua's garbage collection. I do this to keep Garbage collection a non-issue...

collectgarbage("setstepmul",1000) collectgarbage()

Then in my main game loop (an ENTER_FRAME) I have this:

collectgarbage("step") --print(collectgarbage("count")*1024)

Uncomment the line to make sure the garbage amount is fairly constant and doesn't 'run away'. You can regulate it by changing the 1000 setting for setstepmul.