font size effect

Skaperen · 2019-01-23 03:50:22

in Whiskers >> Settings >> Appearance >> Fonts >> Default Font i have selected Noto Sans with a size of 16. this makes the size of characters on the panel, in menus, and various windows that get opened, look readable. but this also affects some characters in Firefox (such as forms buttons) but not many others, which remain small and hard to read. to make those small characters easier to read, i can enlarge them by holding down the Ctrl key and rolling the mouse roller pulling the top towards me. but this also makes the character that were affected by the appearance setting (Noto Sans 16) also get larger. the setting that makes Firefox reasonable is the default (Noto Sans 9). but at that setting the panel, menus, and various windows like properties, very hard to read. terminals are unaffected and have their own font settings.

i suspect this is a Firefox issue. but it is triggered by switching to Xfce so maybe someone else here has encountered this and found how to work it out.

programs should have their own explicit font size setting if they are going to have different text classes displayed differently. firefox does this by having the text on their form buttons sized by an outside setting while other text is not.

sh4tr · 2019-01-23 07:35:41

i don't think that's an xfce issue
you must have a display with high dpi to use 16
you may want to read about hidpi and firefox on wiki archlinux org
and i'd recommend liberation instead of noto

Skaperen · 2019-01-24 02:11:18

yeah, i know it's not an xfce issue. but i do think it's a desktop environment issue in general, centered around how firefox interfaces with the desktop environment that is running. short of having firefox developers online, my thought was maybe someone here might have experienced this.

my display is about 43cm (17in) diagonal and 1920x1080 pixels (HD 2K). it is a Kudu Pro laptop from System 76 a few years ago.

OK

looks about the same. what font would you recommend in the terminal?

Last edited by Skaperen (2019-01-24 02:16:18)

sh4tr · 2019-01-24 14:21:54

liberation mono or iosevka

about:preferences > fonts > advanced > min font size, fixes your issue

Skaperen · 2019-01-25 00:22:03

actually about:preferences > fonts > advanced > min font size is showing the problem to be more complex than i thought it originally was. it is fixing it in certain cases (certain combinations) but making it worse in others (more exaggerated). i think i need "max font size", too. ideally i need a way to be specific for each of the varied relative sizes HTML can specify (a "font size palette" so to speak) and for the different classes of fonts (form button font default that way unless explicit CSS changes them (but typical CSS does not).

mint4all · 2019-01-25 03:05:21

Well,

Your topic is reminiscent of a phase in my long-gone professional life, long long time ago, in "a galaxy far away" [/grin] ... In those old main-frame days, corps like IBM spent millions developing high-density fonts for their high-priced "terminals". Heck, for the original price of their 3270-PC (after inflation & $-devaluation factored in) you could now buy a nice mid-size crossover today. Anyways, a collection of those mainframe-era fonts is posted @ https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/f … ibm_others (note: not my collection!). After looking this over, you can decide to download the entire collection of fonts, IBM's and other's included.

Btw: most of those ye ole fonts are bitmapped fonts, that's what provides for the density of their character's bitmaps; there may be .ttf versions of some posted somewhere, idk. Worth a try?

Cheers, m4a

Skaperen · 2019-01-25 03:27:33

have you seen anywhere the fonts from 029 keypunch machines?

yeah, i know those years. started on a 360/44.

mint4all · 2019-01-25 19:29:04

Skaperen wrote:

have you seen anywhere the fonts from 029 keypunch machines?
yeah, i know those years. started on a 360/44.

Amahhzing ... I cut my programmer's [milk-]teeth on an IBM 1130 with FortranIV and Assembler, then "graduated" to an NCR-Century 75 writing COBOL. But i digress ... No, i can't locate that way-back dot-matrix image hoping that all the pins still worked and there was enough ink left in that ribbon punching a 5k deck of cards. So how about those console printers? Perhaps that kind with that curly thermal paper? Oh i'm having such fun and could go on ... [/offpoint]

And the winner, imho, is: "OCR A Extended Regular". On my Xfce4-Terminal's window (100x50) i get the tightest line- & character-spacing by far compared to Courier10 or UbuntuMono, the 2 runners-up fonts. Come to think of it, that old OCR-A font is quite easy on my old eyes so i'll keep it for a while wink

Have fun -- thanks for this discussion!

Cheers, m4a

Skaperen · 2019-01-25 20:32:53

got to "play" with an 1130 way back in high school at about the same time as the 360/44. got some occasional access to a 360/195.

first coded on a PDP-8 before then.

i loved 360/370 assembler. it got me my first real computer job doing code mods to a large VM/CMS system in 1979. i've always loved operating systems.

mint4all · 2019-01-26 00:25:23

Skaperen wrote:

... I've always loved operating systems.

To be honest, for me it was a love-hate relationship. My geeky passions found a relief in the art of systems-integration of recalcitrant stuff, and writing the "glue"-pieces that held it all together b4 the dawn of auto-configuration that's now being taken for granted.

Case in point: the mess we're in re. wifi- & bt-incompatibilities. Imho, xfce could go a long way along those lines, but it is "just a DE", and the devs seem to be intent on keeping it that way, am i right? Eh well ...

Cheers, m4a

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#1 2019-01-23 03:50:22

font size effect

#2 2019-01-23 07:35:41

Re: font size effect

#3 2019-01-24 02:11:18

Re: font size effect

#4 2019-01-24 14:21:54

Re: font size effect

#5 2019-01-25 00:22:03

Re: font size effect

#6 2019-01-25 03:05:21

Re: font size effect

#7 2019-01-25 03:27:33

Re: font size effect

#8 2019-01-25 19:29:04

Re: font size effect

#9 2019-01-25 20:32:53

Re: font size effect

#10 2019-01-26 00:25:23

Re: font size effect

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