[PD] cross platforms issues with displaying fonts in vanilla but not in Purr Data

[Alexandre Torres Porres]

howdy, been using pd in mac over a decade but now I got a PC with windows &
linux and I did some tests and found some issues, I was discussing this in
a ticket in sourceforge* but thought it was best to bring it to this list.

First thing I noticed is that in linux the text font was quite bold and
wider, this compromised the visuals as the text does extrapolate the patch
file area, see 1st attachment, comparing a file in mac and linux
(1-MACxLINUX.png) - mac is the left part, linux is the right part with a
circle mark showing how it extrapolated the area of the patch; this also
comprises the alignment of patches, cause it's the same font used inside
objects, so they get wider, anyway, it does interfere and it'd be nice if
all patches would load just fine in any platform, hence my posting here...

Moving on, I also noticed that linux uses "Deja Vu Sans Mono", and how in
mac that is somehow substituted to "Monaco". More over, windows can't find
"Deja Vu" and prints a warning saying it loaded "courier" instead. Though I
think windows looks pretty bad with the courier font, there doesn't seem to
be the same kind of conflict as the font spacing seems to be the same - see
2-windows.png attachment.

Now, as far as Purr Data goes, tested it in all systems,  and they all come
with "Deja Vu Sans Mono" and they all look quite nice and the same!!! I
wonder why don't we have the same thing going on for vanilla, where they
all carry the same font!

Then I kept testing, did check Pd-Extended, which I think didn't have any
similar issues like Purr Data, but then something funny happened. After
trying Extended in windows, I reopened vanilla and now it does find the
"Deja Vu Sans Mono" font, it doesn't print any warning and doesn't load
courier instead anymore. So what happens? It looks "bad" and exactly like
linux! See 3-win_dejavu.png attachment.

What intrigues me is that Purr Data (or Pd-l2ork) does load "Deja Vu Sans
Mono" for all platforms and even so the patch does not look "bad" like
that, as an example, I'm attaching a print screen from pd-l2ork in Linux
(4-l2ork.png), to show that it doesn't look like the linux part of the
image from 1-MACxLINUX.png

So, I'm a little confused as why using this "deja vu" font does promote
such a visual difference in vanilla (as shown in linux and windows) but not
in Pd-l2ork or Purr Data (and maybe even extended). I consider it a "bug",
an important issue on how patches behave in cross platforms, even if it is
just a visual (font display) issue.

I just hoped we could make vanilla laod the same fonts in all platforms and
that patches would all look the same as in Purr Data, what's preventing it
from happening?

thanks
cheers

* this is the ticket I'm also discussing this issue in
https://sourceforge.net/p/pure-data/bugs/1270/
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