[PD-dev] more on the 12 point font mystery

[Miller Puckette]

Hi HC,

Two issues I don't know how to deal with yet: first, although I agree the
fonts you're using seem to have nearly consistent sizes, they are smaller
than the "traditional" sizes so everyone's existing patches will look wrong.
For compatibilty's sake Pd should somehow read old patches with the old
sizes by default.

Second, I gather that lucida isn't guaranteed to be installed in linux or
other flavors of unix (BSD, anyone?)  In particular, the default install
of Fedora/Gnome doesn't seem to have it.  So Pd has to be able to do something
appropriate when lucida isn't there.

These are probably quite possible to solve.  In a related skirmish, I have
to introduce a new file format in some upcoming release to allow for
controlling the width of boxes, which, stupidly, I never left a place for
in the current format.

cheers
M

On Sat, Sep 22, 2007 at 08:55:19PM -0400, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> 
> Hey,
> 
> I just added Windows picks of the fonttest.tcl.  If you at those  
> images in sequence, you can see there are only really tiny variations  
> on each platform, EXCEPT 12 point on GNU/Linux.  Strange, but that's  
> the way it seems to be.
> 
> As for the existing size measuring code, I think it was part of the  
> problem.  Plus if we can make it work on all platforms without any  
> dynamic sizing, which is a great potential source of bugs, why not  
> just hard code it?
> 
> I made two little movies to illustrate the issue:
> 
> http://pow.idmi.poly.edu/~hans/pdfonts/fonttest/normal.mov
> http://pow.idmi.poly.edu/~hans/pdfonts/fonttest/bold.mov
> 
> As you can see in the movie, there is no dynamic measurement needed,  
> the fonts are all very close one tk scaling is set to 1. Except, of  
> course, the pesky 12 point on GNU/Linux.
> 
> .hc
> 
> On Sep 22, 2007, at 2:21 PM, Miller Puckette wrote:
> 
> >HI HC,
> >
> >Pd has code automatically to do that, which is disabled in your  
> >font patch
> >for some reason:
> >
> >            /* best is now the host font index for the desired font  
> >index i. */
> >        sys_fontlist[i].fi_hostfontsize =
> >            atom_getintarg(3 * best + 2, argc, argv);
> >        sys_fontlist[i].fi_width = atom_getintarg(3 * best + 3,  
> >argc, argv);
> >        sys_fontlist[i].fi_height = atom_getintarg(3 * best + 4,  
> >argc, argv);
> >
> >cheers
> >Miller
> >
> >On Sat, Sep 22, 2007 at 01:08:23AM -0400, Hans-Christoph Steiner  
> >wrote:
> >>
> >>I decided to take Pd out of the equation, so I did a quick test using
> >>just Tcl/Tk on Mac OS X and Ubuntu Studio.  It looks like it confirms
> >>what I am talking about: for some reason 12 point is big on GNU/
> >>Linux.  So I think we can handle this by forcing 12 point fonts to
> >>actually use 11 point on GNU/Linux machines.
> >>
> >>Here is the script and the screenshots:
> >>
> >>http://pow.idmi.poly.edu/~hans/pdfonts/fonttest/
> >>
> >>.hc
> >>
> >>
> >>--------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> >>---
> >>----
> >>
> >>If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>PD-dev mailing list
> >>PD-dev at iem.at
> >>http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-dev
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
> ----
> 
> If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
>