Re: Tiny fonts preclude my using GoboLinux

On Tue, 11 Apr 2017 12:56:33 -0300
Hisham <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Steve! (I recognize you from lua-l :-) )
> 
> Indeed, we included a less than ideal setup of fonts and colors as the
> default, 

:-) Less than ideal is one way to put it. "I can't read it" is
another. :-)

> and I take responsibility for that. 

Thank you! A lot of projects would have simply said "hey, if you don't
like it, don't use it, or fork it."

:-) How do you fork something you can't read? :-)

Anyway, thanks for taking responsibility: Many projects wouldn't have.

> The problem is that we
> are in an era with a huge variability in display resolutions (this
> variation has gone down in years past, and is now back up with
> machines ranging from netbooks to Macs with Retina displays and the
> like). 

Yes! I hear of 1920x1080 on cellphones. How does one view raster
fonts,  designed for 27" monitors, on a 5x8 cellphone?

> Sometimes, this is even an unsolvable problem, when two
> monitors with wildly different dpi's are plugged (as is the case in
> my own setup — I usually lower the resolution of my 12-inch laptop
> when I plug the 26-inch external monitor to make font sizes match).
> 
> One technical problem is that our custom-designed font, which is an
> important part of Gobo's visual identity, is a bitmap font. In any
> case, usability is more important, so I'll be sure to fix the font
> situation for the next release.

If you get GoboLinux to the point where I can read it, I'll help with
testing and other stuff. There are some low-hanging fruit that can be
done quickly and easily without tampering with your custom-designed
font:

* Make menu entries #ffffff, with hover color #00ffffff. If plausible,
  consider also enlarging the menu fonts.
* Document what needs to be changed to revert the preceding to the
  kewler darkblue on black, for those with enough vision to appreciate
  it.
* Make a shellscript (call it "clockterm") to run your default terminal
  with huge clock-face font:
     xterm -bg black -fg rgb:cc/ff/ff -fn lucidasanstypewriter-bold-24
  This enables the person to work, with nano if necessary. This
  shellscript name should be publicized. If you don't normally package
  lucidasanstypewriter-bold-24, make it something else that's huge,
  bold and mono.
* If the whole screen can be zoomed or shrunk with a dpi setting
  (without undo bad effects), publicize what edit in order to
  accomplish that.

Armed with the preceding, assuming prominent publication of clockterm
and the location of the dpi setting, a person with very bad vision
could be operating GoboLinux somewhat comfortably within about 2
minutes, with minimal impact on those who like the current theme.

Later you can make bigger point sizes of your custom designed font, but
for now the preceding provides a dead-bang simple way to remove the
catch-22 precluding operation by those with less than 20/20 corrected
vision.

> 
> Thank you for the feedback!

You're welcome, and like I said, when you make this thing readable
enough to get my foot in the door, I'll help.
 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
April 2017 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
     of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques
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