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

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Sep 22, 2007, at 10:00 PM, Miller Puckette wrote:

> 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.

On my Debian etch machine, the Pd-extended fonts are slightly larger:

http://pow.idmi.poly.edu/~hans/pdfonts/screenshots/hcs/Debian- 
etch_new-old_compare.png

As for the other platforms, on Windows, the fonts were always too  
small, on Mac OS X, they were too big, and on GNU/Linux, things are  
all over the place because things can be configured so many different  
ways.  For example, on my Debian Etch machine, it doesn't have  
Courier installed (it's not installed by default), so it's using some  
other font.  I think this is pretty common. So basically, there is no  
existing standard size.

> 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.

Any flavor of Lucida is guaranteed to be installed only on Windows.   
I wasn't suggesting to use it as the default font on all platforms,  
only Windows, as long as it is very close in size to Bitstream Vera  
Sans Mono.  For example, Pd-extended uses Monaco as the default font  
on Mac OS X which is very close in size to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.

It's a shame they aren't free since they are very nice fonts.  They  
are included with Java, but you probably don't want to make people  
install Java in order to get the fonts working properly. :D

> 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.

That would be nice to have for sure.

.hc


>
> 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
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>>
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> ---
>> ----
>>
>> If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
>>



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