Fonts for VAST on Linux

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Joachim Tuchel

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Jul 27, 2018, 2:06:06 AM7/27/18
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Now that VAST 9.1 looks and feels better on Linux, I'd like to make it a home.

One of the things that are really annoying to me is the selection of Fonts available for Browsers and Code. The standard font imo is ugly. Unfortunately, the selection of alternative fonts is very small on both Kubuntu and Xfce. And, to put it positively, given that selection, the default font is by far the best choice.
I guess this is due to the fact that the Motif Library used in VAST uses some ancient font formats or even ships its own... ?

Does anybody know what kind of fonts I'd have to install to make them available in VAST? Is there anything special I need to do to use installed system fonts within the IDE? The desktop environments these days ship with really nice fonts and I guess they'd work well in a Smalltalk Browser...


Joachim

Joachim Tuchel

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Nov 19, 2019, 2:18:46 AM11/19/19
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So here I am, looking at the ECAP 3 of 9.2 in Kubuntu. It's not a full replacement for the Windows version, given there is no Scintilla support in VAST on Linux. I guess this will not change before VAST has its home on GTK or similar.

9.2 improves its look&feel on Linux again, making development on Linux even better. Mousewheel scrolling and the removal of some "keyboard oddities" are really nice.
 
I'd like to change the code and browser fonts to make this even better. But the font prompter only offers a hand full of more or less useless fonts, while other Applications on Kubuntu display wonderfully crafted fonts and offer a plethora of fonts. I guess I need some fonts in some pre-Gnome/GTK format (motif-compatible?) and install these. I just don't know what to look for... Any hints?

Joachim

Mariano Martinez Peck

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Nov 19, 2019, 7:37:47 AM11/19/19
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On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 4:18 AM Joachim Tuchel <jtu...@objektfabrik.de> wrote:

So here I am, looking at the ECAP 3 of 9.2 in Kubuntu. It's not a full replacement for the Windows version, given there is no Scintilla support in VAST on Linux. I guess this will not change before VAST has its home on GTK or similar.


Hi Joachim,
Yes, I mostly agree with you. The only bit I will add is that I used wine very very happily in Linux (I already sent an email about this). Scintilla and even HiDPI worked nicely. 
 
9.2 improves its look&feel on Linux again, making development on Linux even better. Mousewheel scrolling and the removal of some "keyboard oddities" are really nice.
 

Indeed 9.2 improves again the usability on Linux. I am glad you noticed. 

 
I'd like to change the code and browser fonts to make this even better. But the font prompter only offers a hand full of more or less useless fonts, while other Applications on Kubuntu display wonderfully crafted fonts and offer a plethora of fonts. I guess I need some fonts in some pre-Gnome/GTK format (motif-compatible?) and install these. I just don't know what to look for... Any hints?


VA Smalltalk on Linux uses the X server to provide and render fonts.  You should be able to select and use  any font that can be made available and rendered by the platform’s X server. However, not all X servers support all fonts.  I presume you are familiar with using xlsfonts to list the available fonts. If not, what I normally do in Ubuntu/Debian kind of thing is:

 sudo apt-get install xfonts-base xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfonts-cyrillic xfonts-scalable xfonts-encodings  

Then with `xlsfonts` check what I have and see if I have something I like more and later set that in VAST. 

But again, I couldn't find anything that made a big difference.

If you do, please let me know. 

Best regards, 

--
Mariano Martinez Peck
Software Engineer, Instantiations Inc.

Joachim Tuchel

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Nov 20, 2019, 3:18:33 AM11/20/19
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HI Mariano,

thanks fro explaining.

I installed the ones you suggested (sans cyrillic) and I found Kubuntu already had most of the installed. I couldn't find anything other than bistream courier that's slightly better than the default.

Joachim

Joachim Tuchel

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Nov 21, 2019, 8:46:42 AM11/21/19
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Hi Mariano,


just a little side comment:

Wine is not an option if you have to test/explore Linux specific problems. Examples:
  • Codepage-conversions (UTF-8 to 8859-1 and vice versa) very different results between Linux and Windows
  • External programs (always async on Windows to my knowledge)
  • if your program requires external resources that are only available on Linux
  • problems with DB driver may be only existent on Linux
Thes are only the situations in which I could only find and safely reproduce production problems on Linux. I guess there are more.
There are situations that can only be tested/debugged on the target platform. 

So, yes, you can use Wine for VAST and it seems to run fine, but it is not a full replacement for "native" VAST on Linux.

Joachim



Mariano Martinez Peck

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Nov 21, 2019, 8:58:14 AM11/21/19
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Hi Joachim,


Anyway, I agree with you and that's why we will try to push for GTK. 

Cheers, 

Joachim Tuchel

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Nov 21, 2019, 9:24:15 AM11/21/19
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Sorry for that ;-)


Mariano Martinez Peck

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Nov 21, 2019, 9:37:07 AM11/21/19
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No problem. Just wanted to link both conversations for the future. 

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:24 AM Joachim Tuchel <jtu...@objektfabrik.de> wrote:
Sorry for that ;-)


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