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Cezariusz
Tomato Guru
Poland
244 Posts |
 Posted - Nov 24 2003 : 05:18:53 AM
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I have enabled the option to display local symbols in bold, and VAX uses a bit different font when displaying bold and italics:
Note:
- strLibrary and strLanguage are local symbols, they are grey and sort of shrinked, don't look bold for me
- strLanguages is an unknown symbol and is displayed with my normal font (Courier New CE 12)
- GetItemText is italics, but also differs in height
I'm using ClearType if it matters.
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Cezariusz Marek
https://midicat.net/ |
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support
Whole Tomato Software
5566 Posts |
Posted - Nov 24 2003 : 10:29:13 AM
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Unfortunately, most fonts do not appear well in bold and italics. If you can't tell, strLibrary in the example is bold. We can tell because it's smaller that the other text -- something VA X is doing to make the bold characters fit.
The IDE reserves a fixed height and width for every character drawn on the screen. VA X intercepts the drawing and substitutes the character with one that is bold or italic. The IDE still thinks the character is normal.
Virtually all fonts require more space to display bold or italic. Instead of telling the IDE to reserve more space, VA X sizes down each bold or italic character to make it fit in the space reserved by the IDE.
When Microsoft Word displays bold or italics, it moves each line ever so slightly -- or lets the font encroach on the white space between lines. The IDE can't do something similar in our case since it doesn't even know any of its characters are appearing in anything but regular text.
We know Courier New and Lucida Console work pretty well with our bold and italics options. They size down nicely.
For now, we will add a warning to our options dialog if you use anything but one of the two fonts we know work.
We will look for other solutions. |
Whole Tomato Software, Inc. |
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Cezariusz
Tomato Guru
Poland
244 Posts |
Posted - Nov 27 2003 : 6:24:18 PM
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quote:
Unfortunately, most fonts do not appear well in bold and italics.[...]Virtually all fonts require more space to display bold or italic.
I'm not sure I understand your explanation. I'm convinced that fixed font is characterized by fixed width of each character, regardless of being bold or italic.
I've configured my UltraEdit so it colors C++ code similar way VA does, including bold and italic. Take a look at the same code - bold is bold and italic is italic, no font shrinking, no with problems.
VA X coloring
UltraEdit coloring
BTW. Note some additional UltraEdit features I miss in VA: highlighting the current line and more visible highlighting of matching braces. |
Cezariusz Marek
https://midicat.net/ |
Edited by - Cezariusz on Nov 27 2003 6:29:22 PM |
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support
Whole Tomato Software
5566 Posts |
Posted - Nov 28 2003 : 09:16:28 AM
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Bold is one pixel larger than non-bold. Try it in wordpad. Select part of a line and press bold/unbold -- each of the lines below shifts by one pixel. This typically isn't a big deal except that bold underscores disappear if we try to fit them into rectangles allotted by VS.NET. We are forced to size down a bit so MY_FOO doesn't become MY FOO.
UltraEdit has complete control over display. It's free to change the size of rectangles allotted for characters, effectively trimming the white space between lines if it chooses. VA X does not have the same liberties since VS.NET has most control of the display. Again, VS.NET has no idea VA X is changing some of its output to bold.
We are working on some alternate methods of highlighting. Perhaps we can darken color instead of using bold.
As for background colors of matching braces, we used to support this feature. We cannot remember what happened to it. We will look for it.
We really like the current line highlight so it is on the list. |
Whole Tomato Software, Inc. |
Edited by - support on Nov 28 2003 4:19:52 PM |
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Cezariusz
Tomato Guru
Poland
244 Posts |
Posted - Dec 01 2003 : 3:39:28 PM
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Now I understand what's going on, however I'd like to have an option not to size down, to see if I could live without underscores in local variables.
And what about italic - does it also cut the underscore? |
Cezariusz Marek
https://midicat.net/ |
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support
Whole Tomato Software
5566 Posts |
Posted - Dec 01 2003 : 8:25:50 PM
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Live without underscores in symbol names?!? We tried. Not even a possibility.
Italics have the same problem as bold.
We've implemented the UI to allow darkening and lightening of colors for local and/or stable symbols. We hope to have the UI connected to our display code in the build 1205.
Please tell us if the feature has value. If not, we try something else. |
Whole Tomato Software, Inc. |
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Cezariusz
Tomato Guru
Poland
244 Posts |
Posted - Dec 04 2003 : 05:52:53 AM
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Looks like in 1205 you allowed me see how it is to live without underscores? Hmm, at the beginning it's funny and not so bad. I still prefer that to downsized font. You know, for a while my brain didn't even notice undersores are missing. More annoying is cutting a part of the last letter in italic symbols.
Generally undersores are used in two main situations:
1. for preprocessor symbols - no big problem here
2. for member variables in classes (m_something) - they are not local in function definitions, so the underscore is missing only in class definitions. Actually, I don't think the member variables should be bolded in class definitions.
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Cezariusz Marek
https://midicat.net/ |
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support
Whole Tomato Software
5566 Posts |
Posted - Dec 04 2003 : 11:39:05 AM
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We thought we hacked 1205 so it could display bold underscores properly. Obviously, we goofed.
What font and font size do you use for text in source windows?
Does the problem occur with a different font and/or size? |
Whole Tomato Software, Inc. |
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Cezariusz
Tomato Guru
Poland
244 Posts |
Posted - Dec 05 2003 : 04:39:29 AM
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Maybe I have a clue: your about box says "Courier New CE 12", while VS6 options dialog says "Courier New CE 9". Where the difference comes from? Another clue - for some reason I have two entries with "Courier New CE" in VS6 combo.
Anyway, changing font to "Courier New CE 8" (VA X says 11) makes underscores visible for bold symbols. Same with 7 (9 for VA X) and any size greater than 9. Hey, for size 14 I can even see the underscores in italic symbols (and for bold they are very thin), but I would have to change the resolution to somewhere like 3072x2304 to make use of it.
There are more fonts, for which underscores are visible, like Verdana 9 or Tahoma 9 (for both bold and italic), but I don't like variable width fonts for programming.
I'll stick with Courier 10 for the time being, because for Courier 8 ClearType makes bolding almost invisible.
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Cezariusz Marek
https://midicat.net/ |
Edited by - Cezariusz on Dec 05 2003 04:42:09 AM |
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