Brad Pepers wrote:
>
> I've been trying to use the latest JDK 1.1.5v7 on a RedHat 4.2 system
> [...]
> The main things I notice off the bat are problems with fonts. The
> font used by default on Linux is in italics which makes things look a
> little ugly.
Sure does! To fix, edit jdk1.1.5/lib/font.properties and change the entry for
"dialog.plain". I use this:
dialog.plain.0=-*-lucida-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
> There also seems to be other font problems. A lot of
> Java applications don't seem to size things right. I'm not sure if
> they are using a fixed layout based on an exact font size which of
> course will screw up when the font is slightly different. Or maybe
> there is a problem with the Linux fonts.
Probably the former, ie, badly written code. The initial window size isn't set
automatically, so many developers (even "experts") just pick arbitrary
dimensions that look roughly ok on their machine. (I believe the correct way is
to call pack() then setSize(getPreferredSize()).
> The latest program I was trying to work with is a report generator
> that sounded really good
Don't believe the hype.
> I've also had similar font problems with most web pages I go to that
> have Java forms or reports. The labels and entry widgets and such
> are all sized wrong so that they cut off part of the text.
Using appletviewer or Netscape? Changing font.properties will affect
appletviewer but not Netscape. Netscape usually picks decent fonts anyway, so
if they look bad in Netscape then it's probably badly written code again
(there's plenty of that out there).
