[Xastir] User-selectable Fonts

[Curt, WE7U]

Earlier we had:  "Maps->Configure->Map Label Fonts" (or similar).

Now in current CVS we have:  "File->Configure->Fonts"

The original dialog had six map fonts that were user changeable, all
were fonts used for drawing maps.

The new dialog has three additional fonts that can be user-defined:

    Menu Font
    Station Font
    ATV ID Font

"Menu Font" is used for all the menus (like, duh!).  Eventually I
hope to have it tied in to all the child dialogs as well.  It's best
to keep this as a fixed-width font (see Map Chooser->Properties for
an example, thanks Bob!).

"Station Font" is used for drawing all the station text on the map,
callsign, speed, temperature, etc.

"ATV ID Font" is a very large font that gets drawn across the map
screen for a few seconds in order to identify an ATV (fast-scan TV)
transmission.  Change "ATV_SCREEN_ID:0" to a '1' in xastir.cnf to
enable this (there's no GUI access for this variable).  You'll also
see the ID string on the status line but that's a bit small for most
cameras to pick up, therefore the large font across the map screen
for a few seconds.

Since I don't use Map Chooser->Properties all that much and can
count columns if I need to, I've been playing with this font for
both Menu and Station fonts:

    -*-clean-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Helvetica works pretty well too.

To get back to default fonts:  Erase the font strings of interest on
that dialog and restart Xastir.  Another method:  Shut down Xastir,
delete the font lines in the xastir.cnf file and start it back up.

If you have "xfontsel" on your machine and Xastir has it's path
configured in (via ./configure) it's relatively easy to browse
through your fonts to see what they look like before using them in
Xastir.  Once you find one you want to try with "xfontsel", hit
"select" and then "quit" to paste that string into the proper field
in the Fonts dialog, then hit OK and restart Xastir.

You may also hand-edit the font strings.  If you mess up the format
Xastir may be unable to load your font of choice and resort to the
default font.  In that case you should see popup dialogs and STDERR
text to the xterm to notify you of this condition.

"xfontsel" limits the possible selections for each field based on
your current selections for all the other fields.  It's like a big
filter for fonts.  Change back to '*' for some fields to widen your
choices for other fields.  "xfontsel" takes some getting used to.

Have fun!

-- 
Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo dot com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
  Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"