OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Setup & Installation
OS/2 Warp 4 system font is too large - how to reduce font size?
wsgibson:
Thanks Pete. I installed the SNAP driver. That does cause the SDD* variables to work and does give me more options to possibly correct my situation. Though the results from using the variables seem somewhat limited as well have a similar effect to using the DefaultFont setting. I need to experiment a little more. I have found that the SNAP driver tends to hang my system at times. Mostly, if not only, when switching screen sizes (to or from a full size command prompt for example). I did not have this issue before.
Scott
wsgibson:
Andreas,
I had tried setting DefaultFont to "10.System Proportional" and the fonts still seemed to me too large. They were not as bad as before but they still seemed larger than necessary. It would be nice if there was something like a size 8 or 9 System Proportional font.
Using the MEDIUM variable size setting gets me what I have with DefaultFont set to "10. System Proportional" and using SMALL still has clipped widget and button text in various places.
I found the patch for PMMERGE.DLL but my version does not match the patchable version. So I cannot use this at the moment. Perhaps I still have more updating to do. I am currently at FP 15 and DD 2.
I know what you mean about the Help buttons. They, as some other graphic elements, seem to be hard coded in places.
Thanks,
Scott
Alex Taylor:
Try setting DefaultFont to "8.Helv". IIRC this is the default on DBCS versions of OS/2 and so most of the system dialogs should scale fairly well with it.
IIRC the IBM help viewer uses hard-coded fonts in some places, in which case there's nothing you can do about that except maybe use NewView instead (which I would generally recommend anyway, due to clipboard support, etc.).
BTW, if you see clipped dialog text with DefaultFont, it's a bug in that application, not a bug in OS/2. All dialogs are supposed to be designed to fit the default dialog font (normally System Proportional), whether or not they actually use a different font for display. This is not unfortunately very well documented for programmers. However, the fact that the DefaultFont setting causes system-wide rescaling of dialogs is not only the correct behaviour, it is important that it work like this as some environments (including all DBCS versions of OS/2) depend on it.
If you don't have such an environment, then the patch that Andreas mentioned may well work for your purposes... but you do need to understand that this patch works by deliberately breaking part of the correct Presentation Manager behaviour. It's a trade-off, and you should understand the ramifications.
wsgibson:
Thanks Alex. I understand that 3rd party apps could have an issue and maybe even some OS/2 system apps. I am seeing this issue even with OS/2's dialogs. For example, if I select Properties on a folder the Icon tab will display a button with "reate another." instead of "Create another...". Also the selection boxes will say "Templat" and "Lock positi". I get this same result if I use any other font (Helv, WarpSans) other than System Proportional for DefaultFont. I even get the same result if I use SDDFONTSIZE=SMALL (with/without DefaultFont set).
I suppose things could be worse, it just seems that something is not right. Maybe this is just how it is supposed to be. I really appreciate everyone's help with this. This seems like such a rookie configuration yet at the moment a workable solution still eludes me.
Thanks for the tip with NewView. This really solves my biggest pain since the help text was large everywhere.
Thanks!
Scott
Andreas Schnellbacher:
--- Quote from: Scott Gibson on April 22, 2013, 06:09:03 pm ---I had tried setting DefaultFont to "10.System Proportional" and the fonts still seemed to me too large.
--- End quote ---
OS/2 dialogs need exactly this size (or the default 12 pt one for resolutions greater 1024x768).
Otherwise you get clipping.
--- Quote from: Scott Gibson on April 22, 2013, 06:09:03 pm ---Using the MEDIUM variable size setting gets me what I have with DefaultFont set to "10. System Proportional" and using SMALL still has clipped widget and button text in various places.
--- End quote ---
Sure, I expected that.
After all, I seems to me like you're using a monitor too large for its resolution. I'm happy
with the recommended solutions and use 1920x1200 on a 24" TFT monitor.
The other option would be to upgrade to the newer eCS version of PMMERGE.DLL
to be able to patch it. I won't recommend that without exchanging other parts of the system. So, you should better switch to eCS, sooner or later.
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