[Xastir] Font troubles

[Tom Russo]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 02:19:06PM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
> On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 04:13:05PM -0400, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <patrickdk at patrickdk.com> flavor, containing:
> > I have noticed the same thing, the new code uses a smaller font on my  
> > system. But I like it better though.
> 
> I like the *code* better (because I get to pick my own fonts to my heart's 
> content), but the default made for an unpleasant surprise after an upgrade.
> But at least I didn't experience crashes like some folks are.

FWIW, on all of my FreeBSD and Linux systems, the file 
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias shows the "fixed" alias to be:

fixed        -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1

So for purposes of not violating the "principle of least surprise" for 
users who are going to upgrade from a previous released version, perhaps
the default should be a 13 point fixed font when the font can't be read from
the config file.  Those of us tracking CVS will already have dealt with this,
but there are plenty of users using binary packages or who only upgrade when
a stable release comes out instead of development snapshots, and keeping the
font roughly the same as before the upgrade would probably stave off some
bug reports.

Of course, complaining vigorously to the packagers of X installations that
don't have a unique "fixed" system alias might also be appropriate.

> > Quoting Tom Russo <russo at bogodyn.org>:
> > 
> > > On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 12:55:06PM -0700, we recorded a   
> > > bogon-computron collision of the <archer at eskimo.com> flavor,   
> > > containing:
> > >>
> > >> Yet another idea would be to use
> > >> "-*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" as the default font.  Here
> > >> we specify only the parameters that are important and leave the rest
> > >> to the system.  In fact near the top of main.c:main() you'll see
> > >> "*.fontList: -misc-fixed-*-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*".  This font gets
> > >> used if we don't set the font.  But we do set the font.
> > >
> > > BTW, when I built and started using the new code, I found that this choice of
> > > default fixed font was significantly different from what "fixed"   
> > > used to be on
> > > all of my systems.  The menus started being ridiculously tiny.  
> 
> -- 
> Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
> Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
>  "Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours."  -- R. Bach
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xastir mailing list
> Xastir at xastir.org
> http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
 "Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours."  -- R. Bach