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#100 UI text output looks hideous on Mac OS X.

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nobody
9
2007-10-14
2007-10-14
No

The UI log window output looks really bad on Mac OS X - pretty much unreadable.

This is probably due to the window being set up to use a font that is not available on Mac OS X. May affect other platforms as well.

- Terry

Discussion

  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-14
    • summary: UI log output looks hideous on Mac OS X. --> UI text output looks hideous on Mac OS X.
     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-14

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    This is a problem all over the UI. I'm pretty sure it's a missing font.

    I'm changing the bug title to reflect that the problem is larger than the log window.

    - Terry
    File Added: log window screenshot.png

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-14

    Picture of the log window showing the font issues.

     
  • Bret Jordan

    Bret Jordan - 2007-10-15

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    The font looks fine on the buttons, which also use the same font, but looks terrible in the window. I can hardly read it.. :( I choose Sans Serif as the font as I thought it would be the most common across all platforms. There must be some sort of rendering issue (maybe that fact that I have it at 8pt) or some sort of issue with the font that is being used by OSX. If we can find a font that works on all platforms, then I will change all the ui files. I have seen issues in the past where windows and linux have issues with certain fonts if they are too small. One way or another, I agree with you. We need to fix it..

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

    About Dialog - Bad Text Screenshot

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

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    I fired up the About dialog in Designer on Mac OS X. It looks like Mac OS X is using a generic crappy PC-font by default for *some* text. Notice that the header text on the about dialog looks fine. For those labels, Lucidia Grande is used.

    Attached are 4 screenshots to help visualize the problem.

    File Added: abtdlg - bad text.png

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

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    File Added: abtdlg - bad text font.png

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

    About Dialog - Bad Text Font Info

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

    About Dialog - Product Info Screenshot

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

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    File Added: abtdlg - product info.png

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

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    File Added: abtdlg - product info font.png

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

    About Dialog - Product Info Font Info

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

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    Mac OS X is using Lucidia Grande 13 on the buttons and on the other labels on the about dialog that look ok.

    Here's what I think is going on:

    Mac OS X (or Qt) is picking Lucidia Grande as the closest font to Sans Serif (which doesn't exist on Mac OS X, btw), but the smallest font size in Lucidia Grande that Mac OS X shows in Font Book is 9pt, so I suspect that it's defaulting to the next "best" font capable of 8pt that it can... which is the PC generic font in this case.

    The odd thing is that I can manually size Lucidia Grande to 8pt in Font Book, but it doesn't have an actual 8pt option built into itself according to the Font Book.

    I'll file a Qt tech support incident for this issue to see if they have any insight.

    - Terry

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

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    Ok, I've verified that this is in fact happening. I fiddled with designer a bit. 9pt Lucidia Grande looks great, but 8pt looks really bad.

    Attached is a screenshot of the about dialog in designer after tweaking these fonts to be 9pt. (Note: I am not going to commit these changes, I only did it to understand what was happening).

    I'll be filing a bug with Qt to figure out why this behavior is occurring.

    See the attached 9pt about dialog screenshot.
    File Added: abtdlg - 9pt.png

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-15

    About Dialog - 9pt Lucidia Grande

     
  • Terry Simons

    Terry Simons - 2007-10-16

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    Still waiting on Qt, but here's the bug information:

    [Issue N183285] Font sizes smaller than point 9 look bad on Mac OS X.

     

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