3

I have studied that problem on Internet and I still cannot the solution to the following warning. In .log file I get 20 times

Missing character: There is no p in font nullfont!
Missing character: There is no t in font nullfont!

and I obviously don't use "pt" anywhere. Is it possible that there is a problem in arrows.meta? MWE:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows.meta}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw[line width=7,-{Triangle[angle=60:1 1.5]},postaction={draw,white,line width=6,shorten <=0.5,shorten >=0.9}] (6.36,9.5) -- (5.1,9.5);
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}
Pygmalion
  • 6,387
  • 4
  • 34
  • 68
  • Your example runs on my TL13 without problems. – Johannes_B Dec 15 '14 at 09:25
  • 1
    @Johannes_B Have you checked .log file? – Pygmalion Dec 15 '14 at 09:26
  • Oh, right. But those aren't error messages. – Johannes_B Dec 15 '14 at 09:28
  • @Johannes_B Sorry. What would be the right way to call them? – Pygmalion Dec 15 '14 at 09:29
  • Information/warning Please have a look at tikzpicture "There is no ... in font nullfont", but no extraneous text – Johannes_B Dec 15 '14 at 09:31
  • 3
    This is the result of unnecessary pt in the PGF code. Something like \somedimen=#1pt where #1 was expected to be a number without units but had units so the pt is output into the document. However inside a tikzpicture the font is set to \nullfont resulting in these warnings. – Mark Wibrow Dec 15 '14 at 09:34
  • @MarkWibrow So it is essentially the problem in code? Maybe it should be reported to the author? – Pygmalion Dec 15 '14 at 09:36
  • 1
    @Pygmalion This has been reported multiple times. See also tikzpicture options causing "There is no [ in font nullfont!"? The code behind pgf is HUGE and it is just a warning. – Johannes_B Dec 15 '14 at 09:39
  • @Johannes_B I've seen that post. In that case it was the error of the PGF user, and nobody mentioned that error was reported. I know it is just a warning, but it slows down compiling (and I have to compile the whole document, because I have zillion of cross-references). – Pygmalion Dec 15 '14 at 09:44
  • @AndrewSwann Well, I have the latest update (I have just re-checked that, just in case). I guess this doesn't have anything to do with my platform (miktex), so perhaps reporting to PGF author would be still a good idea? – Pygmalion Dec 15 '14 at 09:57
  • See http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/179297/lots-of-missing-character-messages-in-log-file/179313#179313 for a way to identify the command which throws out the garbage. (And I get the missing messages in a current TL14). – Ulrike Fischer Dec 15 '14 at 10:07
  • I can now confirm the messages. I think this should be reported. – Andrew Swann Dec 15 '14 at 10:37
  • AFAICT in this case the problem is with the arrows.meta library as without the arrow specification there are no messages. – Mark Wibrow Dec 15 '14 at 10:39
  • Here is a minimal example \draw[-{Stealth[]}] (0,0) -- (0,1); - the Triangle[] is just a customized to Stealth. Replacing with Circle removes the warnings. – Andrew Swann Dec 15 '14 at 10:53
  • 1
    Some tickets for this bug (1, 2) already exist. – Paul Gaborit Dec 15 '14 at 10:57
  • Thanks all for help. So false alarm after all, as the warning has already been reported. We simply have to wait... – Pygmalion Dec 15 '14 at 11:01
  • 1
    I was disturbed writing a comment, so a little later: Does it really slow down? Can't notice that with the minimal example ;-) You can save a lot of time by externalizing the tikzpictures. if they don't change every time, you will get one slow compile and all following compiles are much faster. – Johannes_B Dec 15 '14 at 15:31
  • 4
    This question appears to be off-topic because it is about a but which has been reported (links included in comments). But the question ought not be deleted as it is likely others encounter the same bug. (It may also be a duplicate here - I'm not entirely clear about that.) – cfr Dec 16 '14 at 01:56
  • @Johannes_B can you give me a hint how to externalize and pre-compile figures? Possibly without having 100 external files with figures... – Pygmalion Dec 16 '14 at 10:00
  • Have a look at the manual of tikz/pgf, there is a section for this. But the thing with externalization is, there will be external files. At least two for each tikzpicture. – Johannes_B Dec 16 '14 at 10:02

0 Answers0