Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Andre.Bisseret]

Le 2 mars 10 à 18:15, François Chaplais a écrit :



Le 2 mars 2010 à 17:56, Andre.Bisseret a écrit :

I have read this thread on Apple mail, and at some point (pun  
intended) I realized I could zoom and de-zoom the messages by  
pinching or spreading my fingers on the touchpad, from the hardly  
visible to waaay too enlarged.

Now, if rev could incorporate this *other* side of the spectrum...
But I guess this would imply switching to cocoa.

François



François,
On Mac with the control key down, (either with the touchpad or the  
scroll wheel of the mouse), all what is on the screen in enlarged,  
including the rev stacks, isn'it?


Amitiés de Grenoble
André



It does not work on my latest MBP, snow 10.6.2.
Isn't that from the "universal access" system control panel?


Ah! yes; I just caught a glance (first time I go there;-)) In  
"Préférences système" / accès universel there is a pane "Vue" where it  
is possible to set the zoom


To go further, and this has been mentioned in this list, trapping  
multitouch gestures as messages would be handy (confider the future  
revmobile platform). This should be available to all platforms. The  
the stack could handle the message by itself (for instance enlarge  
the font size of a field).

There is a report on this at qacenter # 8446

Thanks for the link

cordialement
André


cheers
François




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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[François Chaplais]

Le 2 mars 2010 à 17:56, Andre.Bisseret a écrit :

>> I have read this thread on Apple mail, and at some point (pun intended) I 
>> realized I could zoom and de-zoom the messages by pinching or spreading my 
>> fingers on the touchpad, from the hardly visible to waaay too enlarged.
>> Now, if rev could incorporate this *other* side of the spectrum...
>> But I guess this would imply switching to cocoa.
>> 
>> François
>> 
> 
> François,
> On Mac with the control key down, (either with the touchpad or the scroll 
> wheel of the mouse), all what is on the screen in enlarged, including the rev 
> stacks, isn'it?
> 
> Amitiés de Grenoble
> André


It does not work on my latest MBP, snow 10.6.2.
Isn't that from the "universal access" system control panel?

To go further, and this has been mentioned in this list, trapping multitouch 
gestures as messages would be handy (confider the future revmobile platform). 
This should be available to all platforms. The the stack could handle the 
message by itself (for instance enlarge the font size of a field).
There is a report on this at qacenter # 8446

cheers
François

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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Andre.Bisseret]

Le 2 mars 10 à 16:41, François Chaplais a écrit :



Le 2 mars 2010 à 08:45, G.Wolfgang Gaich a écrit :


Hello all,

I didn't read all the mails of this thread.

My suggestion:

In Ubuntu go to System/Preferences/Appearance/Fonts.
Activate Subpixel smoothing and click on details.
There you can adjust the resolution (dpi) to the needs of your  
display.

dpi = xres x 2.54 / the width of your display
For my display I have 116 dpi and the fontsizes are ok.

Regards,

Wolfgang
I have read this thread on Apple mail, and at some point (pun  
intended) I realized I could zoom and de-zoom the messages by  
pinching or spreading my fingers on the touchpad, from the hardly  
visible to waaay too enlarged.

Now, if rev could incorporate this *other* side of the spectrum...
But I guess this would imply switching to cocoa.

François



François,
On Mac with the control key down, (either with the touchpad or the  
scroll wheel of the mouse), all what is on the screen in enlarged,  
including the rev stacks, isn'it?


Amitiés de Grenoble
André

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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[François Chaplais]

Le 2 mars 2010 à 08:45, G.Wolfgang Gaich a écrit :

> Hello all,
> 
> I didn't read all the mails of this thread.
> 
> My suggestion:
> 
> In Ubuntu go to System/Preferences/Appearance/Fonts.
> Activate Subpixel smoothing and click on details.
> There you can adjust the resolution (dpi) to the needs of your display.
> dpi = xres x 2.54 / the width of your display
> For my display I have 116 dpi and the fontsizes are ok.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Wolfgang
 I have read this thread on Apple mail, and at some point (pun intended) I 
realized I could zoom and de-zoom the messages by pinching or spreading my 
fingers on the touchpad, from the hardly visible to waaay too enlarged.
Now, if rev could incorporate this *other* side of the spectrum...
But I guess this would imply switching to cocoa.

François

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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[G.Wolfgang Gaich]

Hello all,

I didn't read all the mails of this thread.

My suggestion:

In Ubuntu go to System/Preferences/Appearance/Fonts.
Activate Subpixel smoothing and click on details.
There you can adjust the resolution (dpi) to the needs of your display.
dpi = xres x 2.54 / the width of your display
For my display I have 116 dpi and the fontsizes are ok.

Regards,

Wolfgang





On Mon, 2010-03-01 at 15:41 -0800, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> Before I trudged off to the Gnome Usability List with my questions, I 
> figured I owed it to them and myself to first dig up what I can on my 
> own.  Glad I did - here are some highlights:
> 
> 
> [Usability] Gnome is Too BIG..
> 
> 
> Gnome is too big, indeed.
> 
> 
> Default font size too large if using native DPI
> 
> 
> The note there in comment #67 explains the Firefox "anomaly":
> 
>  Web browsers use pixel-based preferences for arcane reasons
>  that made a lot of sense in 1999 but that are making steadily
>  less sense over time. They'll probably switch to points a few
>  years after OSes do.
> 
> 
> So at least I'm not alone in my observations about Gnome, and it seems 
> it is indeed a Gnome issue and not specific to Ubuntu.
> 
> What I haven't found is how/if the Gnome team will attempt to resolve 
> this.  There are some serious backward compatibility issues at stake, so 
> I appreciate the many reports filed against this marked "Won't Fix".
> 
> Over the long term we can expect the Gnome team to come up with 
> something clever, Firefox will migrate to points over pixels, and Rev 
> will improve its GTK support to go along for the ride.
> 
> In the short term, I'll just use 12-point fonts with more 
> conventionally-sized controls than most Gnome apps, so I can ship on 
> time at the relatively small cost of a handful of users who won't be 
> grateful that I'm making better use of their screen real estate. :)
> 
> --
>   Richard Gaskin
>   Fourth World
>   Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
>   Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
>   revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Mark Wieder]

Peter-

Interesting. On Ubuntu I get

mwie...@mwieder-ubuntu:~/revolution/3.5.0-gm-2$ ./revolution
Will try and use Shared Memory extensions
XVideo extensions available? : No
Will use X-Freetype font rendering
Using Pango complex text layout
*** glibc detected *** ./revolution double free or corruption (out):
0xb7dbf1a0 ***

mwie...@mwieder-ubuntu:~/revolution/4.0.0-gm-1$ ./revolution
*** glibc detected *** ./revolution double free or corruption (out):
0xb7ea0198 ***

Then, of course, I kill each process with a -9.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwie...@ahsoftware.net

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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Peter Alcibiades]

This is what it does:

pe...@vv:~/3.5.0-gm-2$ ./revolution
Will try and use Shared Memory extensions
XVideo extensions available? : Yes
Will use X-Freetype font rendering
Using Pango complex text layout


then if you do 4.0 from the command line, the size is identical, and you get
this

pe...@vv:~/ Studio4.0.0-gm-1$ ./revolution

and it starts up.

Maybe we have to do something with X-Freetype font rendering, however one
might go about that?

Peter
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Mark Wieder]

Peter-

Monday, March 1, 2010, 6:36:15 PM, you wrote:

> see any difference in this whatever the window manager.  So maybe this is
> something Rev is doing in Gtk?  And if so, why on earth are they doing it?

How about launching revolution from the commandline instead of
double-clicking the icon? I've found gtk errors that way, and at least
you should get an interesting message stream...

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwie...@ahsoftware.net

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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Peter Alcibiades]

Well, they are an interesting set of links!  

It sounds like Ubuntu is now shipping their version of Gnome with too large
defaults, at least for some people, and that this can largely be dealt with
by correct choice of theme and fonts. Also that the size of the system bits
does not adjust for the monitor resolution, so if your monitor is larger or
smaller than the Gnome default design, you'll have to do this.   Or is this
misunderstanding the situation?  

One of the postings suggests seeing what the difference is between the
xdpyinfo resolution and the gnome resolution is.  In my own case, Debian
Squeeze, no tweaking with these parameters, xdpyinfo gives 101 x 101 dpi,
whereas gnome (which I don't use except very occasionally) gives 96.  That
is odd.

But still and all, and independently of this, there is a problem with Rev,
and it seems, only with Rev, and it does not seem to be Gnome related,
because its identical in Fluxbox, which I use all the time  In Gnome just as
in Fluxbox, start up Rev, and you seem to be presented with fonts sizes in
the dictionary and in the menu bars of a size which, to get the same size in
all other applications, you'd have to use 6 or maybe even 4 point.  I can't
see any difference in this whatever the window manager.  So maybe this is
something Rev is doing in Gtk?  And if so, why on earth are they doing it?  

Richard, are you noticing this too?  That the ide and dictionary are so
small as to be almost unusable in Linux?

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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richard Gaskin]

Bob Sneidar wrote:

> What would REALLY be nice, is if there were properties in Rev for
> Default Field Font, Default Label Font, Default Button font etc,
> with sizes and styles to match. Then it would be a simple matter
> of changing the defaults depending on what platform you were running.
>
> As is, you have to do repeat loops on all your objects until a better
> fix can be had.

Yes, a simple built-in way to handle this would be a great addition for 
a multi-platform development tool like Rev:




In the meantime, Ken and I discovered that we each do something very 
similar to what you described, and have begun collaborating on a central 
library to handle that (and a whole lot more).  Once it gets fleshed out 
it'll be submitted to the Rev Interoperability Project for review and 
enhancement, but I've started using it in one of my apps now.


--
 Richard Gaskin
 Fourth World
 Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
 Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
 revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Bob Sneidar]

Hi Richard. 

It may be rather tedious, but when I developed in Foxpro, there were always 
these kinds of issues. What a font looked like in Windows was NOT what it 
looked like in the Mac OS. 

So the initialization program set up variables with fonts and sizes based upon 
what platform you were running at the time. What would REALLY be nice, is if 
there were properties in Rev for Default Field Font, Default Label Font, 
Default Button font etc, with sizes and styles to match. Then it would be a 
simple matter of changing the defaults depending on what platform you were 
running. 

As is, you have to do repeat loops on all your objects until a better fix can 
be had. 

Bob


On Mar 1, 2010, at 3:41 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Before I trudged off to the Gnome Usability List with my questions, I figured 
> I owed it to them and myself to first dig up what I can on my own. Glad I did 
> - here are some highlights: 

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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richard Gaskin]

Before I trudged off to the Gnome Usability List with my questions, I 
figured I owed it to them and myself to first dig up what I can on my 
own.  Glad I did - here are some highlights:



[Usability] Gnome is Too BIG..


Gnome is too big, indeed.


Default font size too large if using native DPI


The note there in comment #67 explains the Firefox "anomaly":

Web browsers use pixel-based preferences for arcane reasons
that made a lot of sense in 1999 but that are making steadily
less sense over time. They'll probably switch to points a few
years after OSes do.


So at least I'm not alone in my observations about Gnome, and it seems 
it is indeed a Gnome issue and not specific to Ubuntu.


What I haven't found is how/if the Gnome team will attempt to resolve 
this.  There are some serious backward compatibility issues at stake, so 
I appreciate the many reports filed against this marked "Won't Fix".


Over the long term we can expect the Gnome team to come up with 
something clever, Firefox will migrate to points over pixels, and Rev 
will improve its GTK support to go along for the ride.


In the short term, I'll just use 12-point fonts with more 
conventionally-sized controls than most Gnome apps, so I can ship on 
time at the relatively small cost of a handful of users who won't be 
grateful that I'm making better use of their screen real estate. :)


--
 Richard Gaskin
 Fourth World
 Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
 Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
 revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richmond Mathewson]

On 01/03/2010 22:51, Peter Alcibiades wrote:


Now how does:
   

1. One find if these things; Pango, Xft, and so forth are present in a
system?


 

Use Synaptic and look them up - it will show you what's installed and what
is available.

Peter

   
I really am a bit thick at times . . .  :)  I am so used to using the 
Terminal and Apt

that I tend to forget about these "new-fangled things with GUIs".
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richmond Mathewson]

revFontLoad, on Mac and Win, means I can load any silly old font I like 
from any silly old

location into my stack and use it.

Were revFontLoad to work in Linux I have a funny feeling that almost all 
the font problems
would be solved, or, at least ameliorated to such an extent that 
everybody felt considerably

better.
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Peter Alcibiades]

I checked and it is known to Synaptic as libpango, and its installed.  With
quite a few subsidiary libraries.  It probably came as a dependency with
Gtk, in which case most all distros will have it.
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Peter Alcibiades]

Now how does:
> 
> 1. One find if these things; Pango, Xft, and so forth are present in a 
> system?
> 
> 

Use Synaptic and look them up - it will show you what's installed and what
is available.

Peter

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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richmond Mathewson]

Now here's a thought:

On Mac there is a folder called .font in the user's Home folder (you 
cannot see it because the DOT

makes it invisible): RunRev DOES NOT see fonts there. Try it.

So it is probably rather daft to expect RunRev to see fonts in the same 
folder in Linux.


Something tells me that the font work for RunRev Linux is either:

1. Whatever is left over from the Linux version of Metacard: and Linux 
has changed quite a bit

 since then.

or

2. Based on the UNIXy bits of Mac OS X.

As Metacard 2.5 sees the same fonts as RunRev 4 (on Linux) I am plumping 
for #1 above.


What is interesting is that the Menubar for MC 2.5 (Linux) has larger, 
easier to read letters

that the MC 4 derived from RunRev 4 via Jacque's excellent build stack.

However in the folder /Library/Fonts inside the user's Home folder on a 
Mac RunRev CAN see

fonts.


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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richard Gaskin]

Richmond Mathewson wrote:


On 01/03/2010 20:40, Richard Gaskin wrote:

...

I took a minute this morning to take some screen shots of Rev and OS
controls on Ubuntu/Gnome, Win XP, and OS X:




Frankly, Richard, it looks as though you took quite some time and gave
quite a lot of thought to that,
and "took a minute" is somewhat of an understatement.

It is a really good comparison: Thanks.


My pleasure.  It really only took a couple minutes, well worth the 
investment to have the side-by-side comparison to review when making 
layout decisions, and if nothing else to help clarify the mystery of 
Gnome's control sizes.  Glad you found it useful too.



My closing observation there sums up the more significant problem:

Even with the disparity of reported rendered textSize, it's
possible to make layouts that substantially conform to OS
standards rather easily for Mac and Win, and the text and
control sizes of each are close enough that a single layout
will work well on both platforms.

Ubuntu/Gnome, however, uses control and text size so far out
of proportion to other OS standards that they require either
delivering layouts sized smaller than the user sees in other
apps on that OS, or making a separate set of layouts specifically
for that OS.

...

It is not the job of the Linux people to make their OS GUIs conform to
some real or imaginary standard
established by either Apple or Microsoft, any ore than the other way around.


But it may well be in their interest to do so, on two counts:

1. The greatest opportunity for adoption of Linux will come from those 
who've used another OS before (very few who don't have a computer will 
be installing Linux on the thing they don't have ).  Sure, there's a 
vast untapped pool of new users in the developing world who will 
inevitably come to use Linux as their first computing experience, but 
that's long-term and along the way most new Linux users will have had 
prior experience with Windows.


Given this, the degree to which Linux conforms to their expectations in 
ways that carry no adverse risk to usability will benefit from one of 
the strongest usability drivers, consistency.



2. For many, Linux adoption will be driven by the number of apps 
available for the platform.   While good FOSS apps will always enjoy a 
price advantage over commercial offerings, there's plenty of opportunity 
for proprietary software to be ported to the new forthcoming Linux 
audience.  And even among FOSS apps, not all are developed solely for Linux.


So just as we want to see things made easier for transitioning 
end-users, here we're also conscious of the benefits of making 
multi-platform deployments easier for developers.


More apps simply means more users for the platform.

But requiring specialized layouts for one platform slows down deployment 
to that platform, and may even be prohibitive for some, thereby reducing 
the pool of potential new users.



I'll run this control size issue by the folks on the Gnome usability 
list, and will report back anything interesting.


--
 Richard Gaskin
 Fourth World
 Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
 Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
 revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richmond Mathewson]

On 01/03/2010 21:25, J. Landman Gay wrote:

Peter Alcibiades wrote:
Jacque, I don't understand this either.  You gave me the suggestion a 
while

back, and I did install xfs, but it made no difference.

The thing I don't get is why all the other apps work fine, but Rev 
does not. Is there not someone in the development group who could 
just tell us how Rev
handles fonts in Linux?  There must be someone who knows, and if he 
or she

will just tell us, we can probably figure out how to work along with it.


Page 18 of the User Guide lists the requirements for running Rev in 
Linux. It mentions "xft". I don't know what difference one letter 
forward in the alphabet makes, but maybe you do... It also mentions 
Pango.


'Tis true: I looked.

There is mention of quite a few things . . .

Now how does:

1. One find if these things; Pango, Xft, and so forth are present in a 
system?


2. Are we naive to assume that they would be installed on all current 
linux distros (probably,

especially as mplayer is not installed by default.)?

The "lovely" thing about this is that on Mac one can use RunRev and its 
standalones straight out of

the box.

With Windows one might need to install Quicktime (nor unduly arduous).

With Linux one has to do quite a bit . . .

Which is why the Linux version of RunRev is still a bit dicky.


I'll see if I can find out more tomorrow.



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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[J. Landman Gay]

Peter Alcibiades wrote:

Jacque, I don't understand this either.  You gave me the suggestion a while
back, and I did install xfs, but it made no difference.

The thing I don't get is why all the other apps work fine, but Rev does not. 
Is there not someone in the development group who could just tell us how Rev

handles fonts in Linux?  There must be someone who knows, and if he or she
will just tell us, we can probably figure out how to work along with it.


Page 18 of the User Guide lists the requirements for running Rev in 
Linux. It mentions "xft". I don't know what difference one letter 
forward in the alphabet makes, but maybe you do... It also mentions Pango.


I'll see if I can find out more tomorrow.

--
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software   | http://www.hyperactivesw.com
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richmond Mathewson]

On 01/03/2010 20:40, Richard Gaskin wrote:

Peter Alcibiades wrote:

This is really puzzling.  The thing I do see is that Rev's IDE on 
Linux is
grotesquely small, and the dictionary font is grotesquely small.  I'm 
really

surprised in this age of political correctness that Rev considers it
acceptable because it must be simply unusable by a substantial 
minority of

the population.

But I can't see that my desktop icons or panels or any other UI 
elements are
materially different in size from the way they are in Windows.  And 
if they

are, you just resize them, surely?


It's not quite so simple as that if your goal is to make one layout 
that works well on all supported platforms, as I'll explain more below.



But as to the fonts, I fired up Rev, created a stack with a field in it,
then put the font size to 12, and opened up OpenOffice and did the same
thing.  Its true.  Rev looks like its about 6 point, and OO looks 
normal 12

point.  After you find one of the few fonts they will both display!

So which is wrong?  The answer surely must be Rev.  All other 
applications
on Linux work just fine and display the fonts in the same way.  Rev 
is doing

something unaccountably different.

Its exactly the same as which fonts they display.  All the other apps 
find
the same fonts.  Its exactly the same as desktops, all the other apps 
allow

them to be used.

Its not Linux.  Its not even Gnome, because it doesn't matter which 
window

manager you use.  Its Rev.  Its got to be fixed.


I'm not sure it's so easy to dismiss Rev as the culprit here.  Nor may 
it be so simple to just say "Gnome is wrong!" either.  It may be 
something more complex.


I took a minute this morning to take some screen shots of Rev and OS 
controls on Ubuntu/Gnome, Win XP, and OS X:





Frankly, Richard, it looks as though you took quite some time and gave 
quite a lot of thought to that,

and "took a minute" is somewhat of an understatement.

It is a really good comparison: Thanks.

---

I have been having a love-affair with Apple's Charcoal font since OS 9, 
and as such use it for ALL
my buttons regardless of what platform/OS I deploy on. How does "that 
screaming genius" manage

that? we ask ourselves.

Like many things in life the answer comes in 2 parts:

1. He's not a screaming genius, he's largely a lazy slob who likes to 
make things easy for himself.


2. He makes the buttons up on a Mac with Charcoal.ttf installed and 
exports all to snapshot and uses

PNG files as fake buttons.

No fonts doing silly things, no conniption fits, no high-speed flying 
PCs going through windows . . .  :)


Fields . . .  Erm, Yes, Well

However, on a CD I made and marketed about 5 years ago (Hey, have now 
made enough on it to
cover the initial costs - a real screaming genius) for 14 years olds to 
practise their Bulgarian literature
(Big market that . . .  ) having to have absolutely buckets of Bulgarian 
(Cyrillic) text in some 50 +
fields to be deployed across Windows 95 thru XP, I made images of the 
texts, grouped each one,

constrained it and added scrollbars.

Editable text fields are going to be a headache on Linux unless you have 
a copper-bottomed guarantee
that ALL your end-users are going to have the fonts you want installed 
somewhere (X11 fonts???) where

RunRev will see them.

Sanskrit fonts . . .  ERM, YES, WELL.

--



You'll note that on those shots Rev's understanding of text size seems 
to match that of Firefox almost perfectly, even as both Win and Linux 
report very different sizes for their OS controls.


My closing observation there sums up the more significant problem:

Even with the disparity of reported rendered textSize, it's
possible to make layouts that substantially conform to OS
standards rather easily for Mac and Win, and the text and
control sizes of each are close enough that a single layout
will work well on both platforms.

Ubuntu/Gnome, however, uses control and text size so far out
of proportion to other OS standards that they require either
delivering layouts sized smaller than the user sees in other
apps on that OS, or making a separate set of layouts specifically
for that OS.

It's been a while since I've maintained Linux distros here other than 
Ubuntu/Gnome, so it would be interesting to learn if this vastly 
disproportionate default control size is unique to Ubuntu or to Gnome.


I would imagine that KDE, with it's tendency to mimic the Win look and 
feel to some degree, may have control sizes more in keeping with other 
common OS norms.


But it would be interesting to find other Gnome-based distros which 
have control sizes that more closely fit those on Win and Mac.


FWIW, if I recall correctly the Gnome control sizes I see in Ubuntu 
are rou

Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Peter Alcibiades]

Jacque, I don't understand this either.  You gave me the suggestion a while
back, and I did install xfs, but it made no difference.

The thing I don't get is why all the other apps work fine, but Rev does not. 
Is there not someone in the development group who could just tell us how Rev
handles fonts in Linux?  There must be someone who knows, and if he or she
will just tell us, we can probably figure out how to work along with it.

Peter
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richard Gaskin]

Peter Alcibiades wrote:


This is really puzzling.  The thing I do see is that Rev's IDE on Linux is
grotesquely small, and the dictionary font is grotesquely small.  I'm really
surprised in this age of political correctness that Rev considers it
acceptable because it must be simply unusable by a substantial minority of
the population.

But I can't see that my desktop icons or panels or any other UI elements are
materially different in size from the way they are in Windows.  And if they
are, you just resize them, surely?


It's not quite so simple as that if your goal is to make one layout that 
works well on all supported platforms, as I'll explain more below.



But as to the fonts, I fired up Rev, created a stack with a field in it,
then put the font size to 12, and opened up OpenOffice and did the same
thing.  Its true.  Rev looks like its about 6 point, and OO looks normal 12
point.  After you find one of the few fonts they will both display!

So which is wrong?  The answer surely must be Rev.  All other applications
on Linux work just fine and display the fonts in the same way.  Rev is doing
something unaccountably different.

Its exactly the same as which fonts they display.  All the other apps find
the same fonts.  Its exactly the same as desktops, all the other apps allow
them to be used.

Its not Linux.  Its not even Gnome, because it doesn't matter which window
manager you use.  Its Rev.  Its got to be fixed.


I'm not sure it's so easy to dismiss Rev as the culprit here.  Nor may 
it be so simple to just say "Gnome is wrong!" either.  It may be 
something more complex.


I took a minute this morning to take some screen shots of Rev and OS 
controls on Ubuntu/Gnome, Win XP, and OS X:




You'll note that on those shots Rev's understanding of text size seems 
to match that of Firefox almost perfectly, even as both Win and Linux 
report very different sizes for their OS controls.


My closing observation there sums up the more significant problem:

Even with the disparity of reported rendered textSize, it's
possible to make layouts that substantially conform to OS
standards rather easily for Mac and Win, and the text and
control sizes of each are close enough that a single layout
will work well on both platforms.

Ubuntu/Gnome, however, uses control and text size so far out
of proportion to other OS standards that they require either
delivering layouts sized smaller than the user sees in other
apps on that OS, or making a separate set of layouts specifically
for that OS.

It's been a while since I've maintained Linux distros here other than 
Ubuntu/Gnome, so it would be interesting to learn if this vastly 
disproportionate default control size is unique to Ubuntu or to Gnome.


I would imagine that KDE, with it's tendency to mimic the Win look and 
feel to some degree, may have control sizes more in keeping with other 
common OS norms.


But it would be interesting to find other Gnome-based distros which have 
control sizes that more closely fit those on Win and Mac.


FWIW, if I recall correctly the Gnome control sizes I see in Ubuntu are 
roughly the same as I used to see in Motif and Irix.


--
 Richard Gaskin
 Fourth World
 Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
 Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
 revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richmond Mathewson]

On 01/03/2010 20:15, Peter Alcibiades wrote:

"What accounts for this tendency toward uncommonly large control sizes?"

What tendency???

There isn't any such tendency, as far as I can see.  None.  Maybe its
something to do with Ubuntu and how they configure things out of the box?
Dunno.  But it is not a factor in any distro I've used.

   

"uncommonly large control sizes"

Humpf.

Set at a screen-res of 1280 x 1024 on a 17" monitor my Ubuntu 10.4 Alpha 3
(also known as "Richmond's Impatience") screen font sizes LOOK (which is
fairly subjective) pretty much the same as my Mac OS 10.5.8 at
1280 x 1024 on a 17" monitor.

The inescapable facts are:

1. Linux "does" fonts in a different way to Mac and Win.

2. RunRev on Linux "doesn't" very well when it comes to fonts.

Having said that I should say that, for my standalones I deploy in
my school (which have to be converted into standalones using
RunRev 2.2.1 because Ubuntu 5.10 is unable to cope with standalones
made with RunRev 4 and because my tatty-old PCs cannot cope
with newer versions of Ubuntu - not that that matters really for
my purposes) I always do the build on one of the target machines
(although I normally design the stack on a Mac or a more advanced
Linux machine) after going through the stacks and setting all fields
and buttons to work properly with the fonts RunRev 2.2.1 sees on
them.

My honest opinion is that for what we might like to term "coloured
Hypercard" teaching stacks RunRev on Linux really doesn't have any
major problems with stacks.

The "fun" starts when one wants to leverage stacks from outwith the
system.
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Peter Alcibiades]

"What accounts for this tendency toward uncommonly large control sizes?"

What tendency???   

There isn't any such tendency, as far as I can see.  None.  Maybe its
something to do with Ubuntu and how they configure things out of the box? 
Dunno.  But it is not a factor in any distro I've used.

-- 
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Bob Sneidar]

If I had to guess, it's the fact that Win and Apple use graphics engines that 
can render smaller objects with greater detail, and so there is no need to make 
objects larger in order to make them look better. 

Bob


On Feb 28, 2010, at 1:57 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Since the days of Motif, *NIX UIs have tended toward very large controls 
> compared to their counterparts on Mac and Win.  While I appreciate the 
> benefits of a larger target size, on balance it also seem a poor use of 
> space, requiring common UI elements to take up much more of the screen real 
> estate than they do on Mac and Win, and to that degree they take away focus 
> from the user's content.
> 
> What accounts for this tendency toward uncommonly large control sizes?
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richmond Mathewson]

On 01/03/2010 18:22, J. Landman Gay wrote:
Since I know little about any of this, I'll just add the info as it 
was passed to me:


Rev needs X11 fonts. It only works with those. Tiny fonts are caused 
by the font server in use. A customer who had the same issue wrote: 
"It was my font server, xfs. Somewhere in a recent reconfiguration to 
support xfstt, I pooched it. I reinstalled/reconfigured xfs, and it's 
all ducky."


The problem, and it is a real problem, is that end-users (and folks like 
me) don't know their X11 fonts from

their other fonts.

This makes it well-nigh impossible for a developer to deploy a 
stand-alone that requires a custom font

to be installed.

This may make things "all ducky" to those whom Linux is a clear pond; 
but as far as I am concerned

I have a really hard time telling my Mallard from my Shovellers:

http://animal.discovery.com/guides/wild-birds/gallery/mallard_duck.jpg

http://i.treehugger.com/images/2007/10/24/northernShoveler.jpg

or, as I mentioned a while back: the duck eggs are blue and the drake 
eggs are green . . .  :)


And before you mention 'it' - fonts don't have beaks.
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[J. Landman Gay]

Peter Alcibiades wrote:


But as to the fonts, I fired up Rev, created a stack with a field in it,
then put the font size to 12, and opened up OpenOffice and did the same
thing.  Its true.  Rev looks like its about 6 point, and OO looks normal 12
point.  After you find one of the few fonts they will both display!

So which is wrong?


I have some old info from a 4-year-old tech support ticket, but it 
worked back then and it may still work now. Since I know little about 
any of this, I'll just add the info as it was passed to me:


Rev needs X11 fonts. It only works with those. Tiny fonts are caused by 
the font server in use. A customer who had the same issue wrote: "It was 
my font server, xfs. Somewhere in a recent reconfiguration to support 
xfstt, I pooched it. I reinstalled/reconfigured xfs, and it's all ducky."


--
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software   | http://www.hyperactivesw.com
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Re: fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Peter Alcibiades]

This is really puzzling.  The thing I do see is that Rev's IDE on Linux is
grotesquely small, and the dictionary font is grotesquely small.  I'm really
surprised in this age of political correctness that Rev considers it
acceptable because it must be simply unusable by a substantial minority of
the population.

But I can't see that my desktop icons or panels or any other UI elements are
materially different in size from the way they are in Windows.  And if they
are, you just resize them, surely?

But as to the fonts, I fired up Rev, created a stack with a field in it,
then put the font size to 12, and opened up OpenOffice and did the same
thing.  Its true.  Rev looks like its about 6 point, and OO looks normal 12
point.  After you find one of the few fonts they will both display!

So which is wrong?  The answer surely must be Rev.  All other applications
on Linux work just fine and display the fonts in the same way.  Rev is doing
something unaccountably different.

Its exactly the same as which fonts they display.  All the other apps find
the same fonts.  Its exactly the same as desktops, all the other apps allow
them to be used.

Its not Linux.  Its not even Gnome, because it doesn't matter which window
manager you use.  Its Rev.  Its got to be fixed. 
-- 
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http://n4.nabble.com/fonts-what-is-a-point-in-Linux-Gnome-tp1573008p1573367.html
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fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richard Gaskin]

The font prefs in Ubuntu (Gnome) show "10" as the default point size for 
most applications, including the fonts used in menus.


Yet in Rev, setting the textSize to "12" is still much smaller, and only 
when I bump it to "14" does it get even close to what Ubuntu considers "10".


So what is a "point" in font sizes in Ubuntu/Gnome, and why does it 
differ so radically from Rev's rendering of font sizes?


I suspect that Rev is using pixels for points, while Gnome is following 
a more resolution-independent definition of "point".  But note that on 
Win and OS X, both of which are resolution-independent OSes, Rev's point 
sizes match those of the OS almost perfectly.



This lends itself to a follow-up question:

Since the days of Motif, *NIX UIs have tended toward very large controls 
compared to their counterparts on Mac and Win.  While I appreciate the 
benefits of a larger target size, on balance it also seem a poor use of 
space, requiring common UI elements to take up much more of the screen 
real estate than they do on Mac and Win, and to that degree they take 
away focus from the user's content.


What accounts for this tendency toward uncommonly large control sizes?

And is there any hope that over the long term, as Linux become ever more 
gentrified, end-users will demand more of the screen space back and 
those making window managers will satisfy their audience with more 
conventional control sizes?


--
 Richard Gaskin
 Fourth World
 Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
 Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
 revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv
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