Unable to load font multiple times

___ · July 2012

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 · July 2012

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.

___ · July 2012

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 · July 2012

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.

___ · July 2012

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.

___ · July 2012

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?

___ · July 2012

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

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

___ · July 2012

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 · July 2012

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

___ · July 2012

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

Something is definitely wrong.

talis · July 2012

@___ 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?

___ · July 2012

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 · July 2012

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.

___ · July 2012

Absolutely no other code.

➜  font-bug-test  ls
PTC55F.ttf          font-bug-test.gproj main.lua
➜  font-bug-test  cat font-bug-test.gproj 
&lt;project&gt;
 &lt;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"&gt;
  &lt;imageScales/&gt;
 &lt;/properties&gt;
 &lt;file source="PTC55F.ttf"/&gt;
 &lt;file source="main.lua"/&gt;
&lt;/project&gt;
➜  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 · July 2012

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

talis · July 2012

@___
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.

___ · July 2012

Hmm, that's a different error than mine.

I got "No such file or directory."

atilim · July 2012

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

___ · July 2012

@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 · July 2012

@atilim thanks. Waiting to hear from you.

amnon · July 2018

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 · July 2018

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.

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