This is on Ardor 4.7.13 64-bit, on OS X 10.11.5, running on a Macbook Pro 15" Retina.
I have tried everything I can imagine to get this to work right, but still the fonts in Ardour are wrong. Here is an example of the new project window:
All the font issues that get reported on OS X (and there are not many) have so far all been traceable back to the presence of various bits of 3rd party software. Our code works as intended on brand new installations of OS X. We do not know or understand what causes the problems.
This is due to the font “Helvetica Compressed” which purports to be a Helvetica font, and if installed in your “user” fonts it will override your default Helvetica fonts.
To solve this issue, launch Applications/Font Book, and look in the User section, on the left. Disable or remove the item “Helvetica Compressed”.
I’ve seen this a few times in the past. Apparently there’s a font pack, or other application, which installs this font to the user’s font list.
We probably need to change Ardour to use a specific Helvetica font, rather than the Helvetica “family” on Mac OSX.
Confirmed. I believe this is related to the change in how fonts are classified from the ancient Type 1 Postscript fonts to the modern OTF world. Technically, Helvetica Compressed IS a Helvetica font, but the older Type 1 fonts had no way to distinguish between different weights of font beyond Bold.
By removing all old Type 1 Helvetica fonts from my user fonts folder, the problem is resolved.