[PD] Font weirdness with 0.43test

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at at.or.at
Thu Aug 26 21:27:16 CEST 2010


If you use one of the supported fonts, then it should works much  
better, but still with issues on the biggest fonts.  Right now the  
code just measures the width of the characters, and so you can see the  
width is always right.  I suppose we also need to measure the height,  
but then the width might be wrong.  Its maddening.

If Tcl/Tk supports changing the height of a font, then it would be  
easy, we could make any font fit into the boxes.  I haven't found  
that, if only [font metrics] allows you to set and not just query:

http://tcl.tk/man/tcl8.5/TkCmd/font.htm#M11

Matju, have you ever found anything to adjust font height/width  
independently in Tcl?

.hc

On Aug 26, 2010, at 2:43 PM, Miller Puckette wrote:

> OK.. but for 0.43... is there a stopgap?  I can't think of any way to
> get text editing working (i.e., getting the character you click on to
> be the one Pd sees you click on) except by going back to status quo.
>
> cheers
> MIller
>
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 01:54:15PM -0400, Hans-Christoph Steiner  
> wrote:
>>
>> On Aug 26, 2010, at 12:52 AM, Miller Puckette wrote:
>>
>>> My machine is running 8.5... but I don't think it's good to have
>>> Pd's default font choice come out all wrong... ideally, it should do
>>> something reasonable no matter what the font (well, at least if it's
>>> fixed-pitch).  At the very least, Pd has to know the correct font
>>> metrics... and it seems now not to.
>>
>> I should add, given my experience, I don't think this is a realistic
>> goal without major surgery.  Its something I've put a lot of work
>> into trying to get working.  My experience tells me that the best
>> bet is using a default font.
>>
>> Even better would be making the pd <--> pd-gui communication not
>> deal with pixel values and mouse motion, but instead logical
>> operations. For example, instead of pd knowing anything about the
>> text editing operation, that should happen entirely in the gui.
>> Then once the editing operation is complete, the GUI would send the
>> result to pd.
>>
>> .hc
>>
>>> Perhaps a solution for cross-platform patching (such as for making
>>> help
>>> files) could be to say "this will look woerd on other machines  
>>> unless
>>> you use font <blaz> to develope the patch so that you see the
>>> canonical
>>> sizes.
>>>
>>> cheers
>>> M
>>>
>>> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 04:18:49PM -0400, Hans-Christoph Steiner
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Here is the answer to this font problem:
>>>>
>>>> - use Tcl/Tk 8.5 or newer, Tcl 8.4 is very flawed (see archives for
>>>> discussion, basically it makes bad guesses and assigns them to the
>>>> fontname "courier")
>>>>
>>>> - use one of these fonts: {"Courier 10 Pitch" "DejaVu Sans Mono" \
>>>>      "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" "Droid Sans Mono" "Andale Mono"
>>>>
>>>> Anything else and you'll have strange results.  In order to have
>>>> better
>>>> font support, we need to do some major surgery.
>>>>
>>>> .hc
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, 2010-08-24 at 13:38 -0700, Miller Puckette wrote:
>>>>> Long as there's a way to fix a problem I'm having:  in message
>>>>> boxes with
>>>>> many lines of text, you can easily click on one character and
>>>>> select one above
>>>>> it... it gets very confusing.  (Fedora 13 out-of-box).
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm guessing that in the current version the GUI simply tells
>>>>> Pd what size
>>>>> the font ought to have had instead of the genuine one.  Pd
>>>>> could easily
>>>>> expand the box to the ought-to size (at least optionally for
>>>>> those wishing
>>>>> to make cross-platform patches) but should know about the
>>>>> text's actual size
>>>>> anyway.  To be continued...
>>>>>
>>>>> cheers
>>>>> Miller
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 01:21:08AM -0400, Hans-Christoph
>>>>> Steiner wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Aug 23, 2010, at 7:01 AM, Frank Barknecht wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 01:39:08PM -0400, Mathieu Bouchard  
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> BTW I've been using Pd-Extended's Linux/OSX default font
>>>>>>>> size as the
>>>>>>>> basis for all my patches for making my last 400 patches or so.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've used Pd vanilla for all my patches so far, with a
>>>>>>> "10" font-size,
>>>>>>> whatever that is in pixels. I know, that Pd-extended uses some
>>>>>>> different
>>>>>>> layout for several years now, which makes patches look
>>>>>>> wrong when you
>>>>>>> load them in Pd vanilla and the other way around. I have not  
>>>>>>> much
>>>>>>> interest to discuss the differences between vanilla and
>>>>>>> Pd-x, as I am
>>>>>>> hoping the two to unify again with the gui-rewrite. So I'm
>>>>>>> willing to
>>>>>>> change my preferences to whatever will be the new vanilla, but  
>>>>>>> I'd
>>>>>>> prefer to not do again that with every release or with every new
>>>>>>> Courier-like font that pops up on the Internets' Top 10
>>>>>>> console font
>>>>>>> lists and is so much better than the previous ones.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Unless Miller changes it in the future, Pd 0.43 should have
>>>>>> the same
>>>>>> boxes sizes that Pd-extended has had for a couple versions.  That
>>>>>> was one of my goals with the GUI rewrite.  Its a bug if that's  
>>>>>> not
>>>>>> the case.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> .hc
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The arc of history bends towards justice.     - Dr. Martin Luther
>>>>>> King, Jr.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally
>> for machines to execute.
>> - from Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
>>







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