Director OS X Field Ink Bug

Andrew Keplinger of Left Brain Games reports an easily-reproducible bug in Director MX 2004 with text fields under Mac OS X.

Basically, if you use the Darkest, Lightest, or Blend inks on a text field sprite, the visual display is garbled and stretched horizontally as in the image above (the lower sprite uses the Normal ink, the upper uses Blend.

Gretchen Macdowell of updatestage verified that this is not an authoring-only issue — it happens in projectors as well. And I, well, I found it in Director MX. No verified sightings under Windows or OS 9.

To find it for yourself, try these steps.

  1. Create a text field with at least a few characters in it (that’s text field, not a text cast member).
  2. Put the field on the Stage or in the Score.
  3. Set the text field sprite ink to Darkest, Lightest, or Blend (Darken and Lighten don’t cause any problem).