topic Re: Font issue between Windows and Mac in Libraries & objects

Font issue between Windows and Mac

Palawat — Wed, 24 May 2023 10:34:58 GMT

Hi everyone,

I'm starting to learn about interface scripting. I found out that , with ui_outfield, the result is not the same on Windows and Mac. Text that looks fine on Windows shows up clipped or missing on Mac.

As a Windows user, I can go to regedit to see/edit the Font Description (right now I'm using Tahoma) but I don't know how to obtain that kind of info on Mac.

Which font should I use to avoid this problem? Given the same ui_outfield's width and height, and the text will looks the same on both platforms.

Any suggestion is appreciated.

Re: Font issue between Windows and Mac

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 18:28:01 GMT

This is a common problem. I've seen it in other cross platform programs as well. Not sure what the fix is (if any). I'd be delighted to know if there is one.

Re: Font issue between Windows and Mac

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 18:56:15 GMT

Hello,

If I remember right from my Macromedia Director studies long ago:

It happens because (for historical reasons) Macs have 72 pixels
per inch on screen and printed - where PC:s have 96 on screen
and 72 printed.

That means for example that 9 points high text in Mac is 12 point
high in PC, thus needing more space on screen.

Re: Font issue between Windows and Mac

Jochen Suehlo — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:12:12 GMT

The width and height of the Outfield does not help.
The text size is given by UI_STYLE ( 0, 1, 2)
You can request, if the object runs on Windows, so you are able to define different styles. You need to experiment a bit.

 
Example: 
 
Dose = 0 
GDL = REQ("GDL_Version") 
sts = REQUEST("Name_of_program", "",TeX) 
IF STRSTR(TeX,".EXE") OR STRSTR(TeX,".exe") THEN Dose=1 
 
IF Dose = 1 THEN tx1 = 0 ELSE tx1 = 1 
 
UI_STYLE tx1, 0

Re: Font issue between Windows and Mac

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:53:35 GMT

Hello,
Have you tried just give the expression and the x,y coordinates?
Omitting width and height makes the text self wrapping.

UI_OUTFIELD expression, x, y [, width, height [, flags]]
...
...
width, height: width and height of the text box. If omitted, the text box will wrap around the text as tight as possible for the given font.

Re: Font issue between Windows and Mac

Palawat — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 03:51:40 GMT

Thank you so much, everyone. I'm really new at this.

Joachim, your code is way over my league but...I kinda get it. And it seems like a good practice.

Juha, I didn't know that before. I'll omit the width and height as you suggested and see how it goes.

Matthew, somehow I'm glad it's "a common problem", not just "my problem" . This platform-crossing thing will probably exist forever.