[Geany-Users] Font too small

[Ronald Fischer]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015, at 15:14, Jiří Techet wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 11:46 AM, Ronald Fischer <ynnor at mm.st> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Jul 17, 2015, at 14:38, Thomas Martitz wrote:
> > > Am 17. Juli 2015 14:21:51 MESZ, schrieb Ronald Fischer <ynnor at mm.st>:
> > > >I have installed Geany 1.25 for Windows.
> > > >
> > > >Different to version 1.24, the font used for, for example, the status
> > > >line and the preference dialogue, is so small that it is very difficult
> > > >for me to read it. Is there a way to change this font size? I found in
> > > >the preferences three font settings, but none of these seem to apply
> > > >here.
> >
> > Screenshot enclosed. As you can see, the text in the edit pane is easy
> > to read. The font for the preferences dialogue is tiny and difficult to
> > read.
> >
> >
> Maybe I miss something but from the screenshot it looks the font is the
> same size like the default system font (judging from the desktop icon
> names
> and the Start button which have the same text size like Geany's dialogs).

Thanks for your effort!

This is correct. I wasn't aware that Geany uses that font from the
system which is used for the desktop icons. Windows uses various font
settings - for example, defaults for the menus, defaults for the icons,
defaults for the "main" text and so on. The font for the icons can be
quite small, as long as I can decipher it. Doing this allows me to use
the screen space better. However, the "preferences" dialogue contains a
lot of text, and as such, it is pretty tedious to read it.  

For example, I've set the icons to a 9 point font, and the menus,
dialogues and the main text to 11 point. I would have expected, that a
program, which allows users to already configure fonts for 3 different
purposes, would also allow to consider the font used for the user
interface, but even if this is not provided and a system font is used,
it would make sense IMHO to use this system font which is used for
dialogues, not the one used for icons, because things like setting the
preferences is more akin to a dialogue that to an icon or a QuickInfo.

The problem with a laptop is that the screen *is* physically small. This
means that one wants to make the fonts as small as possible, but they
should be still usable. In particular, fonts attached to visual symbols
- icons on the desktop, but also icons inside a program - don't need
large fonts, because we have the pictorial representation too which
helps. After all, this the whole idea of having an icon. Other text
however need to be larger, in order to be easily readable. 

> How does the font look in other applications you use? I guess it will be
> similarly small. 

It seems to vary. Some (the Pale Moon browser for instance) use larger
fonts. Some (Outlook!) indeed use the same system font for the
configuration which is used for the icons. Others seem to have the
font-size hardwired. Of the editors, jedit allows to configure the font
size of the user interface, which I find very convenient. I would
appreciate, if Geany would offer too such a configuration....

Ronald