[mythtv-users] Arclight fonts

[Michael T. Dean]

On 05/25/2010 01:24 PM, jr wrote:
>
> I really like arclight, but the fonts are tiny and my eyes are old. I 
> tried increasing the size by changing the sizes under appearances. 
> Nada. Is Modding the theme the only way?
>

You can either have a flexible UI or you can have a user-adjustable UI.  
MythTV chose flexible.  (AIUI, we're no different from XBMC on this 
front, either--there you need to switch or edit the "skin" to change the 
font.)

If you don't understand the issues that allowing users to change the 
sizes of the fonts for which the entire theme was designed, please 
reference all the tickets on Trac about how text (in some translation) 
doesn't fit in the text boxes.  You'd have the same issue in all 
translations if users could just change font sizes.  Similarly, text 
wouldn't properly align with non-textual elements of the theme.

Therefore, anyone wanting differently-sized fonts needs to either change 
to a different theme or take the time to *design* a theme with font 
sizes to their liking, but such that everything fits and aligns properly.

Note that in pre-mythui versions of MythTV, the only way to change font 
size was to select from one of 3 pre-specified font sizes (big, small, 
default).  This approach required the themer to define one or more of 
these font sizes in the theme.  If the themer defined only default, 
then--regardless of the user-specified font size--the theme used the 
exact same font.  If the themer defined default and big and did not 
define small, the theme used the same font for default and small and a 
different font for big.

The *huge* problem with this approach was that a) users didn't 
understand why sometimes the font size didn't work and (much more 
importantly), b) themers were required to design and test every single 
screen in MythTV 3 times to make a theme that supported big, small, and 
default font sizes.

So, really, nothing has changed in the new MythTV--except that now, it's 
not longer the themer's responsibility to do 3 themes at once.  Instead, 
the themer designs the theme to work as desired, then--when someone else 
decides that they don't like the font sizes--someone else can re-design 
the same theme (or a whole new one if they like) to use different font 
sizes.

Mike