Subject: size of GUI font
From: WJCarpenter (bill-abisource@carpenter.ORG)
Date: Tue Jul 11 2000 - 18:53:30 CDT
There is this thing called the GUI font. Along with possibly other
things I haven't come across yet, it is used for writing stuff into
the status bar and writing the numbers on the rulers on the top and
left. On some platforms (BeOS, Win32), it looks like the font and
size used are some sort of system GUI font. On other platforms (QNX,
Unix), the font is explicitly set as a 10pt sans serif font. (Mac is
not implemented, but I imagine it will eventually fall into the former
category.)
For whatever reason, the 10pt font is too small to be read clearly on
my Linux/XFree86/KDE 800x600 system. For example, I can't really tell
that "INS" is "INS" and I can't read whatever-it-is that shows up in
that new progress bar sometimes. I have a hankering to make the size
of the font be a bigger on the platforms where it is currently
hard-wired as 10pt right now, or at least on Unix. Of course, I've
already tried this, and it looks just dandy on my system at 12pt.
Complications....
1. The numbers used on the rulers get placed properly even if very
large (e.g., 72pt). The size of the rulers doesn't change to
accommodate the different font size, but that's probably OK since
they're already pretty thick. If you scroll around a bit, you see
some dirt left by those big numbers. Minimizing and maximizing the
window clears things, so it's hard to say where the problem lies.
Perhaps it's also there at smaller sizes and just isn't noticed.
2. The status bar's size is not based on the actual size of the font
used, so after a certain size the tops and bottoms of characters get
chopped off, and the horizontal positioning is messed up.
Possibilities....
1. Do nothing about this.
2. Convince anyone who cares that 12pt is the right size to use, at
least on Unix, and then under the cover of darkness change the
hardwired constant in gr_UnixGraphics::getGUIFont() from 10 to 12.
3. Make this a user preference item with vague meanings like "small,
medium, large", with "large" being say 14pt. All of these would fit
within the existing rulers and status bars.
4. Make this a user preference item with a numeric value for the
point size, but (silently?) restrict the acceptable range to something
that fits within the existing rulers and status bars.
5. Make this a user preference item with a numeric value, with or
without a restriction on the range, and dynamically size the status
bar and/or rulers to accomodate the actual font size.
6. Do some variation on the default font used to create all our GUI
widgets. (I'm imagining there is an easy to way to get at this.) The
menus and such look like they're done in about 14-15pt sans serif,
which is probably too big for the status bar (which would give a sort
of amateurish look).
My inclination would be to do #4, though there is a small downside to
having a preference item which can't be used on some platforms. I
don't know how things go on QNX, but it's been font-fiddling time for
me on Unix as long as I've been on XWindows (and the snow was mighty
deep back when I started doing that stuff).
-- bill@carpenter.ORG (WJCarpenter) PGP 0x91865119 38 95 1B 69 C9 C6 3D 25 73 46 32 04 69 D6 ED F3
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Tue Jul 11 2000 - 18:55:42 CDT