3D Text / Font dialog not working

@Barry
“If I have SketchUp 2017, and next year the Steam-Powered Babbage Engine Phone OS is released, should I expect SketchUp 2017 to run on the Steam-Powered Babbage Engine Phone OS?”

The answer to that is a whole-hearted, fully resounding, loud voiced: YES.

Both Apple and Microsoft go to very great lengths to make sure that old applications run on newer versions of the operating system. They do that both by forward compatibility of the old libraries, backward compatibility of the new libraries, and even coupling explicit versions of libraries to versions of programs.
If a feature of a program does not work anymore on next years OS version, then the reason is almost always a bug in the program. It is likely not using the APIs in a supported way.
And before you ask: YES, you are expected to fix bugs in old versions of the software. That is part of a normal, professional software developers job.

To be frank, I am appalled at the attitude that you show towards the people on this forum. If the “Sketchup Team Member” in your name indicates that you are employed by Sketchup, then the people who buy the program are the ones who are paying for your salary. You should show a bit more respect for the people paying your salary.

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I wholeheartedly disagree. Why I once stopped using Macs was because Apple upgraded their OS so that I would have had to buy a new machine and new versions of all my software to be able to use the Internet.

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Rene, you joined 2 hours ago. We’ve been through this before on this thread with other newbies. I’m sorry my tone doesn’t meet your expectations.

  1. I gave Ben a workaround that will do what he was asking in his original post.
  2. He asked for a fix for 2015 (released in 2014), and we provided it for 2016, and 2017 and it was included with 2018, which we were working on when he posted this. Why Ben chose not to upgrade to get the fix? He says it’s very very expensive. I’m in engineering, not sales, so I have no idea what the upgrade cost is, but see the next item.
  3. SketchUp has a Make and Pro version in 2015, 2016, 2017. Someone suggested to Ben that he download a newer Make version, set the 3D fonts, save as a 2015 model, then open in 2015 and continue on.

I think Ben’s stance and yours is that you want a patch for 2015? Those are kinda the facts I hope we can agree on?

I agree with @Anssi: I had programs on OS 2 versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 that broke and required fixing. While NeXTSTEP (which I was at IBM and NeXT for) certainly did much much better but isn’t perfect. I do still run NeXTSTEP in VirtualBox on Sierra, which amazes me.

This thread, however, does not amaze me. It’s become more about my tone than my response, and that’s regrettable.

I joined the forum, and left my comment, not for this specific issue, but for the underlying systematic problem that is apparent from your comments (and frankly from the comments by the other Sketchup members as well). You don’t seem to be aware that you need to be prepared to fix bugs in older versions of the software, even bugs that are only apparent on newer versions of the OS. If you don’t do that, then it can lead to a customer buying the software, only to have it stop working the next day because they install a new version of the OS. If all application developers would have the same attitude, it could even lead to the situation that they need to install another version of the OS every time they need to use another application. That is not a sustainable and professional attitude.

In order make sure that bugs in older versions of the software can be fixed, there are in general two approaches that can be taken by an application development organisation. They either:

  1. maintain the old version of the software. So after releasing a new (payed) version 2.0 with new features, following version 1.10, they keep releasing (free) versions 1.11, 1.12, etc. with bug-fixes. It implies that they maintain multiple versions of the software in parallel.
  2. or they fix the bugs in the new version, and offer an upgrade to the new version for people suffering from bugs. But this implies that the upgrade must be free of charge. They usually make that possible by charging separately for new features as add-ons.

In order to decide on an approach, cooperation between the different organisation roles is required. So I suggest that you sit down together with the product management team, the sales team, and the development team to decide on which approach you will take for this.

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If your intend is to discuss the

you should start a new thread.
If you are new, you might want to read some forum guidelines:
https://forums.sketchup.com/guidelines

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No one does this. Where are the free upgrades to Word 97?

Or my beloved Dbase…:frowning:

“No one does this. Where are the free upgrades to Word 97?”

Sigh. That is a typical unprofessional reaction again, pretending that the extreme case of a 20 years old program is somehow comparable to a program that fails to work correctly on the very next OS update.

But to humour you: first of all, Microsoft obviously uses the first approach that I mentioned, they release free bug-fixes for old versions, not free upgrades. And I don’t have personal experience with Word97, but have a look at: https://windowsinstructed.com/run-microsoft-office-windows-10/. Apparently, yes, Word97 still works now. Can you guarantee that SketchUp Pro will still work in 20 years time?

Gee, so Microsoft’s announcement that Office 2011 is no longer supported and likely won’t run correctly on macOS High Sierra was a lie?

MacWrite II won’t run on High Sierra either.

At times like this, I ask myself “What would Scott Hess do?” And then I go to my closet, grab my Diagram! t-shirt from Lighthouse and design to my heart’s delight, tear-off menus and all. If you want to know where "steam-powered Babbage engine The Babbage Engine | Babbage Engine | Computer History Museum) came from: my former employer NeXT had it’s own hardware, but once the other big competitors knew NeXT was dropping hardware to become software-only, every hardware company came calling. It ran on HW from Sun, HP, Dell, DEC, IBM… and then the forum posts kept coming about “if you don’t run on x, (insert HW of choice), I’m outta here.”, until one day it was all broken with a sense of humor from a user who insisted that NeXTSTEP run on the steam-powered Babbage engine. The rest is in the Computer history museum.

And I’m sure you’ll be able to freeze an Intel image of some OS to run SketchUp in 20 years. I still launch SketchUp 6, and it works, but with a blank fonts choice panel, which is the point of the original complaint. It’s not that SketchUp doesn’t work, it’s that I don’t have all fonts listed in my 3D fonts panel choices.

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Seriously, nobody is saying that SketchUp 2015 doesn’t work. I don’t expect
it to work in perpetuity either. Thing is, SketchUp 2015 works great on the
newest macOS, with the exception of a single dialogue box. This was started
solely because via the SketchUp software, users are directed to this forum
in order to share experiences, including perceived bugs. So that’s what I
did. If there was an option to just report an issue to a different group,
that would have been done. Sorry to bother you.

In my opinion — clearly shared by many on this forum — this one dialog box
issue is a simple, small bug. It’s not a request to maintain 2015 to work
on all future OS releases, but to perhaps maintain some functionality when
it ceases to function, such as a dialog box not pulling in the fonts like
it used to. It’s not a request to overhaul software.

I appreciate your input Barry, and your repeated posts, complete with
knee-deep sarcasm and a heavy does of bitter-tasting false superiority, but
it’s getting old. Yes, we are running expensive software on slightly newer
operating systems, and we can’t always expect it to work. But the point
remains, it’s a small thing, and people do expect just a touch of sympathy
there. It’s not always so easy to downgrade an operating system, or bug
Operations to upgrade dozens of software packages at a heft cost. It was a
request, simple as that, and a report of a bug. That’s it.

You’re talking to, and this is not just opinion but backed by number of posts & workarounds, bugs and feature requests filed, the most active SketchUp person on the forums. And it’s been this way for 10 years. There are triple digit members of the SketchUp team on forums, and most wont post because of threads like this. I post, because I know there’s likely only 2-3 people that could figure out a workaround for you, so you could continue on.

And I’m sorry you can’t take a joke. Let’s move on.

Not only did I get the joke, I pointed it out. I know you’re being
sarcastic, and I know you feel the sense of superiority which you’ve backed
up with your qualifications of being a decade long member and most active
poster. Congrats. All joking aside, I wish you would stop berating anyone
who uses this forum to report a bug. Yes, a simple bug report. SketchUp
2015 works except for this one 3D text font dialog. I wish there were some
other way to report bugs that didn’t involve these forums and so much
snark, but there is no other way. I wish I could just buy the new SketchUp,
but it’s not that simple.

The fact remains that there is a missing function that worked before the OS
upgrade, and myself, and many others, are hoping that it could be
addressed. I don’t know if your’e just an active member here or a bona fide
SketchUp employee, but it feels like this is falling on deaf ears. Your
responses, jokes, sarcasm and sense of superiority aren’t that helpful,
unfortunately ,and not something I’d expect as support.

We get it, LOUD AND CLEAR: Barry is telling anyone who reports a bug on a
previous version of SketchUp should just give up. Flat out give up, don’t
bother mentioning it, just walk away and upgrade. Because, WHO WOULD EXPECT
software purchased one year to work the next? Apparently, nobody at
SketchUp. That’s unfortunate.

OK, @monospaced and I had a bunch of PM’s, and here’s sorta where we ended up so we can close this thread (hopefully):

  1. If you have an issue, please contact Support - Technical Support | SketchUp Help as soon as you see it.
  2. I will lobby for maintenance releases for users when unforeseen issues (like future OS releases) appear. However, when we’ve released 2 major versions with maintenance releases in them, but want to go back 3 versions (when an existing workaround exists), then it’s VERY hard for me to lobby the release engineers to crank up the release process and do a patch. The chances of screwing something up in this process is “probable” when you try to sync to code that’s 3 years old.
  3. The last factor is “what % of users does this affect in their work?”. 3D text is not used that often, and 3D text on Mac is a smaller percentage, and 3D text without using the default font is even smaller. It’d certainly would be interesting experiment on 3DWarehouse to see how many models display this case.

This isn’t optimal for Ben’s case and he’s upset, but we have a workaround so at least he, nor anyone else in this thread, is blocked. I can only do so much in this process, and internally, I gave it my best argument a couple of years ago.

In general, the font panel for 3D text on Mac needs a major overhaul.

Thanks for the overview and update. I appreciate it.

For the record, the issue didn’t make me upset, it was the way it was being
addressed here that did. I was frustrated, but I am reasonable and I
understand your point of view. I hope to get the firm to upgrade our entire
team of designer’s software as soon as we can.

See you at BaseCamp.

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Re-reading this as a SketchUp user (as old a post as it is, your product arc is here for all to read), one thing that is evident is that arrogance is not effective in problem solving or even encouraging others to post with any problem after reading.

This problem exists, and it appears that the only resolution is to upgrade to another version.

2017 update fixed this for me, but caused kernel panic on my MacBook that required Apple support. I am trying it again after deprecating my version to 2015.

Side note: Not all users (of any product) are professionals, but are in fact the guinea pigs to make the “Pro” versions acceptable to paid users…or so it would seem. When the ability to utilize the product as “free” to non-professionals becomes non-existent, another product will appear in it’s place and the cycle begins again…

(hopefully my previous version was read by the person who needed to read it most)

Cheers.

It is within my purview, but do you win every argument you’ve ever had in your life? I sure as heck don’t.

What was involved in the kernel panic? Those are very typically hardware issues. And no one is a guinea pig here: if you go into this conversation assuming the people who think I’m arrogant are correct, then there’s not much I can help you with. I come from a very humble folk. Did you try the workaround I suggested for 2015 and did it work?

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