Font size too small for modern LCDs?

Drsbaitso

Well, an its probably safe to say that most of us are phazing out the use of CRTs with lcd montiors in the next decade or so. In regards to max, this creates a sort of headache for myself, being as such I have a fixed resolution screen (1680x1050) and can't do much about that. I look at other programs, and for the most part they offer relatively easier solutions to resize the text if need be (pd, bidule, CPS).. where as the objects are resized and such. I was wondering, would it be possible to create some sort of max startup message that could somehow not only resize all applicable patchers such as help files and such, but reformat the dimensions to fit the new ratio presented by the I guess default object size. Or, alternatively, if someone were to go the brute force route and resize the help/insepctors/extras patchers to a more readible size, say Serif 12, would the list be willing to move towards making all patches that size? I mean, compared to most applications maxs text is tiny and it can lead to fatigue after working for many hours, having to sit closer, squint, etc. And we all don't have 20/20 vision, even with corrective lenses I still have trouble reading things closer than 12"... Anyways, if the list and Cycling were to agree to go that route, I would be willing to resize the text files with the hope that we could keep a certain size standard other than Serif 9. Every 3rd party external seems to use this size too, as making it part the defualt size of most of what constitutes the construction of max led to that being the case.. Well, I think its something that needs to be modified for more modern displays, and max is pretty old as well. I can see why being small on an old performa mac would have its benefits. Well, anyone else for making max's text a bit bigger? I can include some help files I messed about with if anyones interested in seeing the difference.

Anyways! If anyone would like to see the difference, point your browser to HTTP://bine.aporre.com/serif12_help_files.zip

Teh End.

bine

Mark Hill

I was at a beginners' workshop last week (highly recommended BTW) and Gregory gave hints that an upcoming Max version would have the ability to re-size fonts, or somehow improve readability.

Peter Castine

On around Feb 3, 2006, at 16:40, bine~ said something like:
> I can see why being small on an old performa mac would have its
> benefits.

Oh, man, those things had *huge* monitors: 640x480. I grew up with Max
on an SE/30 with 512x384.

> I have a fixed resolution screen (1680x1050)

And some people are working with laptops. The PowerBook LCD in front of
me is bigger than the old 80's all-in-one Macs, but only about half the
pixels you're talking about. Screen real estate is still at a premium
for many of us.

I *do* understand vision needs, we have an extremely high diversity of
sight ability in the family (I'll trade stories off-list).

From time to time the suggestion has come up that Max offer support for
zooming the window display. IOW, providing an option to view the
current window at 200%, 125%, 49.7% or whatever of the "normal" size.
Zoom factors smaller than 100% would be very useful for overviews of
large patchers; those larger than 100% would be useful for detail work
*and* for people with sight issues. The user who wants to should also
be able to set default zoom to 125% or 150% or whatever is best for her
purposes.

I think this would be the stronger approach to dealing with font size
and related issues. Image scaling technology is no longer a monopoly of
PhotoShop & Co. I have no idea if Cycling '74 is willing to take this
on right now. I, for one, would appreciate it.

Best -- Peter

cebec

i, for one, cannot WAIT for improved readability, scalability, zooming, font re-sizing, ANYthing that would make it easier to work with max/msp on a hi-res LCD.
as it is, 4.5.6 seems to have problems with auto fix width and sporadic fix width operation.
setting a global font face and size and having all patches scale to that size and auto fix width would be a boon in and of itself!
zoomability like in plogue's bidule would be fantastic, too, and being able to click or command click into and out of patchers and subpatchers like Reaktor 5, would be a neat feature, imo.