tk-xconq font sizes

tk-xconq font sizes

[Thomas J. Moore]

Hello, developers of xconq.  After playing some of my old wargames again, I
thought I'd look into xconq.  Since the official release is so old, I thought
I'd try the CVS as well.  There was one "major" problem I had with the CVS
(both last month's and today's):

Since so many entity sizes are fixed-sized using pixel-sizes, why are the
fonts fixed-sized in point sizes?  On my 128dpi X display, the interface
looks horrible (text severely overruns the space allotted everywhere).
Changing all the fixed font sizes in tkconq.tcl to negative numbers of the
same magnitude (thus assuming a 72dpi display) makes everything return to
half-way normal.  The font sizes should probably either be user-adjustable
(where applicable, at least with map lablels perhaps) or be negative (i.e.,
pixel-sized, not point-sized), or the interface should change size in
relation to the fonts (you can't always expect someone's "helvetica" to be
the same as adobe's helvetica).  There are definitely places for each of the
three approaches.  Note that 7.4 suffers the same problem in some places, but
it's not as obvious for some reason (perhaps smaller default fonts).

   
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    Thomas J. Moore, Hacker/SysAdmin | TV & video games have destroyed my mind
    inet:  dark@mama.indstate.edu    | unix ada asm c/c++ mcu ee amiga tired
   
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Re: tk-xconq font sizes

[Eric McDonald]

Hi Thomas,

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Thomas J. Moore wrote:

> Since so many entity sizes are fixed-sized using pixel-sizes, why are the
> fonts fixed-sized in point sizes?  On my 128dpi X display, the interface

I'll let Hans give you real answers to your questions and 
concerns, since he has done all the font work in recent memory. 
However, if the text overruns are bothering you as much as they 
bother me, you can turn off unit names in the game preferences. 
When you place your cursor over the unit, you will still be able 
to get its name in the little info panel.

  Regards,
   Eric

Re: tk-xconq font sizes

[Thomas J. Moore]

On 2003.09.19 12:23 Eric McDonald wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
> 
> On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Thomas J. Moore wrote:
> 
> > Since so many entity sizes are fixed-sized using pixel-sizes, why are the
> > fonts fixed-sized in point sizes?  On my 128dpi X display, the interface
> 
> I'll let Hans give you real answers to your questions and
> concerns, since he has done all the font work in recent memory.
> However, if the text overruns are bothering you as much as they
> bother me, you can turn off unit names in the game preferences.
> When you place your cursor over the unit, you will still be able
> to get its name in the little info panel.

Well, I know the labels can be turned off, but what really bothers me is the 
text overruns on the startup dialogs, and any selection lists, like the unit 
list on the right, and the fact that I have to resize the exit dialogs to 
read the message and get to the buttons.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Thomas J. Moore, Hacker/SysAdmin | TV & video games have destroyed my mind
   inet:  dark@mama.indstate.edu    | unix ada asm c/c++ mcu ee amiga tired
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: tk-xconq font sizes

[Eric McDonald]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Thomas J. Moore wrote:

> Well, I know the labels can be turned off, but what really bothers me is the 
> text overruns on the startup dialogs, and any selection lists, like the unit 
> list on the right, and the fact that I have to resize the exit dialogs to 
> read the message and get to the buttons.

>    Thomas J. Moore, Hacker/SysAdmin | TV & video games have destroyed my mind

Well, if you want to turn off the TV for awhile and put your 
"Hacker/SysAdmin" skills to work, you might be able to fix this 
yourself and then submit a patch. The reward: a warm, glowing 
feeling knowing that you gave something back to the OpenSource 
community.... :-)

Eric

Re: tk-xconq font sizes

[Hans Ronne]

>Well, I know the labels can be turned off, but what really bothers me is the
>text overruns on the startup dialogs, and any selection lists, like the unit
>list on the right, and the fact that I have to resize the exit dialogs to
>read the message and get to the buttons.

I see. I thought the problem was with the map fonts. The font in the
selection list and exit dialogs you can already set yourself (both size and
family) in the preference dialog. As for the startup dialogs, some items do
have fixed font sizes, but they could be made user-settable, too. It's a
bit more complicated with the map fonts, as I already explained.

The tcltk interface currently has four fonts:

textfont - user-settable
boldfont - user-settable (same as textfont but bold)
stdfont - fixed
bigfont - fixed bold

The two fixed fonts are mainly used in the startup dialogs. Most other text
items have already been converetd to user-settable fonts.

Hans

Re: tk-xconq font sizes

[Thomas J. Moore]

On 2003.09.19 12:44 Eric McDonald wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Thomas J. Moore wrote:
> >    Thomas J. Moore, Hacker/SysAdmin | TV & video games have destroyed my
> mind
> 
> Well, if you want to turn off the TV for awhile and put your
> "Hacker/SysAdmin" skills to work, you might be able to fix this
> yourself and then submit a patch. The reward: a warm, glowing
> feeling knowing that you gave something back to the OpenSource
> community.... :-)

Um, well, I suppose I could.. it has been years since I did any programming
for the "open source" community; that way I can resume letting the video games
suck the life out of me.  The quick fix I already stated in my first message,
which works fine for me:  set all the hard-coded sizes to negative numbers (I
didn't do it for the mac/windows-specific numbers).  I just searched for
-size in the .tcl file and added a - in front of any literal number. However,
this isn't necessarily the correct answer.  That's part of why I posted my
query to the list before looking into it further.   My questions would be:

1)  For the simplest solution (using pixel sizes instead of point sizes),
what size should they really be?   Just turning them negative assumes 72 dpi,
which is probably reasonable since X and Windows both seem to default to 72
advertised dpi.  On the other hand, 100 and 108 seem common as well, implying
a 30-40 percent increase in the magnitude in addition to making them 
negative.  Plus why the hell does tk on my system substitute nimbus for 
helvetica when I have a perfectly good helvetica?  tk is weird that way.

2)  For the preference solution:  What preferences should there be, and what
preferences should just be scaled up/down from given preferences?  Having too
many font choices in the GUI config dialog can be kind of silly, but I could
see manual editing or some such.

3)  For the GUI-fits-font solution:  I've (in my job) gotten in trouble
before where people for some reason really hate certain types of GUI
resizes.  I don't really know what the right thing is here.  Also, the images
will not auto-rescale along with the font, so maybe it would be odd seeing a
tiny pixmap next to a huge bit of text, especially if the GUI is somehow
gridlocked to the images.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Thomas J. Moore, Hacker/SysAdmin | TV & video games have destroyed my 
mind
     inet:  dark@mama.indstate.edu    | unix ada asm c/c++ mcu ee amiga tired

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: tk-xconq font sizes

[Hans Ronne]

>2)  For the preference solution:  What preferences should there be, and what
>preferences should just be scaled up/down from given preferences?  Having too
>many font choices in the GUI config dialog can be kind of silly, but I could
>see manual editing or some such.

The map fonts differ from the other xconq fonts in that they are not one
size but scaled according to map size. This was much easier to implement
with a series of fixed sizes. We could of course have a user-settable base
map font size for the smallest or largest magnification, but we would then
have to use a methematical formula to get the scaled sizes. This in turn
produces undersirable results, e.g. fonts with odd sizes (for some reason
11 points look worse than 10 or 12 points for most fonts and platforms).

Hans

Re: tk-xconq font sizes

[Hans Ronne]

>Since so many entity sizes are fixed-sized using pixel-sizes, why are the
>fonts fixed-sized in point sizes?  On my 128dpi X display, the interface
>looks horrible (text severely overruns the space allotted everywhere).
>Changing all the fixed font sizes in tkconq.tcl to negative numbers of the
>same magnitude (thus assuming a 72dpi display) makes everything return to
>half-way normal.  The font sizes should probably either be user-adjustable
>(where applicable, at least with map lablels perhaps) or be negative (i.e.,
>pixel-sized, not point-sized), or the interface should change size in
>relation to the fonts (you can't always expect someone's "helvetica" to be
>the same as adobe's helvetica).  There are definitely places for each of the
>three approaches.  Note that 7.4 suffers the same problem in some places, but
>it's not as obvious for some reason (perhaps smaller default fonts).

I'll see what I can do. Somebody with an 800 x 600 screen complained about
the same thing a while ago. Fonts in the tcltk interface are pesky because
their implementations differ a lot between the three supported platforms.
Your suggestion about negative sizes seems like a good idea provided that
it also works under Windows and MacOS.

Hans