Prior to v6, the older frameworks used to write Tinderbox meant that italics and bold used in notes and the UI were created by manipulating the font specified, to give faux-italic or faux-bold characters. To the casual user the difference was minimal.
Since v6, and the move to current Apple frameworks, italics and bold are now generated by using the italic or bold font variants of the normal version of the specified typeface. Thus if $TextFont is Helvetica, italic text is rendered in Helvetica Italic and not a false italic of Helvetica; similar for bold text.
Some fonts well used in the past as Tinderbox defaults may lack these font variants. For instance, macOS currently has no italic variant of Lucida Grande, as used in early versions of Tinderbox. This can be problematic when opening TBX documents created using the latter as italic text and titles are rendered as normal text. In particular this makes it difficult to tell aliases apart from original notes.
As $Text is saved as Rich Text (i.e. with embedded style information) it is not possible to recover 'lost' style caused by the above issue and it will need to be re-applied manually. For title contexts (e.g. aliases titled in italics), there are two possible solutions.
- If a permanent change of font is acceptable, change to one that has both italic and bold variants. If in doubt, use the v7 defaults for the relevant attribute.
- If the existing font is still desired, there is a document setting that allows for aliases to be rendered in underlined normal fonts in addition to the italic styling; i.e if italics are available the title is underlined and in italics, otherwise it is only underlined).