Why is font in the palette menu smaller than UI

• Nov 7, 2016 - 17:50

The font in the palette window is much smaller than the font size in the UI. Is there a way to change it?

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• Nov 7, 2016 - 18:32

As I recall, it is hardcoded to be one size smaller than whatever your OS has set as the main application font. I guess the thinking is that the palette labels are a bit too long to seem like a good fit using the regular application font. I just did a quick check of the source to see but for some reason couldn't find where this happens, so I can't be 100% sure.

There is talk every once in a while about providing some sort of "advanced configuration" options to control stuff like this that most people would never need to touch and would just clutter up a UI but that advanced users might want to tweak.

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• Nov 7, 2016 - 23:48

Thanks Mark. As you may recall, I've mentioned before about font sizes in Musecore2, and how I really missed the simple but effective setting, which was available in the previous version, in the General Tab, to select fonts for the UI and more,. Mark I tell you, when you get older like me, little things can help make using software easier and more enjoyable. I suggest you stay young! Thanks again.
P.S. are you familiar with Blender, the open source 3D modeling and rendering program? The UI is TOTALLY user customizeable and configureable. It really helps anyone to create whatever he prefers for optimal workflow.

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• Nov 8, 2016 - 02:38

As I have explained when you have brought this up before, we still need you to explain via screenshots and/or use cases why simply using the OS setting for overall font size for some reason is not an option for you. If we can understand the issue you are having with this otherwise simple, effective, and very efficient solution (it works for all programs simultaneously rather than requiring you to fiddle with font sizes in each application one at a time), then we can begin to consider how to address any remaining perceived need. But as it is, all available evidence tells me you can solve your problem by setting the appropriate font size in your OS settings - this is how it is designed to work and it works very well.

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• Nov 8, 2016 - 04:14

Mark, it's about options. For some of us, having the option to increase font size for this particular application would be good. And the fact that it used to be available and was REMOVED makes no sense to me. I could understand if removing it allowed some other, greater feature or function to exist. But having an option to customize the UI on a personal level doesn't harm anyone, nor impinge on the functionality of the program, as far as I can tell. So, IF some folks like having Musescore use the OS font (only), then fine, but there's no harm in also allowing some of us to customize, should we have the need. I'd rather not share my personal medical issues with you, but all I can say is that I find it difficult to use the new version, so I have to use the previous one. My system font is fine for other software that I use, or actually, many of those DO allow me to change the UI font anyway. Options are always good.

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• Nov 8, 2016 - 16:51

The point is, you *can* make MuseScore's interface larger, as I have explained many times - you simply need to use your OS's built-in facility for this. And doing so has the benefit of fixing *all* applications at once rather than forcing you to have to do so for each application individually. This is what it seems you are not understanding - or else, you are failing to communicate why you would want MuseScore to look different from every other application on your system.

Removing unnecessary features and replacing with them with more useful ones simplifies the code, simplifies the UI, and provides greater benefit to people. So there is real benefit. The key, of course, are the words "unnecessary" and "more useful" . And that is why we need to understand your use case. You don't need to explain your specific medical history - just explain in practical terms why you need MuseScore to be larger than everything else, and why you think this would be of enough benefit to enough other people to justify complicating the code and the UI.

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• Nov 9, 2016 - 16:49

Marc, my system font is fine as is. But for the Musescore UI, and in particular, the palette and other menus where the font is purposely made smaller, it simply doesn't work for me. In order to see those menus, etc. I would have to make my system font far too large to be practical for general PC use. Giving users the option would simply make the software more user friendly, and I see nothing negative about that. And the fact that this relatively simple function of choosing your own font used to exist in the previous version (so the code was already there) makes me wonder why anyone would be so dead-set against having it. I would think that a simple check box of "Use Default (System) Font" or "Use Custom Font" wouldn't be a big deal, and a nice touch toward user friendliness. I hope you will never have issue with your vision and may continue to enjoy Musecore for a long, long time. It seems we will have to agree to disagree.

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• Nov 9, 2016 - 18:36

We don't have to disagree. I think you are still misunderstanding something here. If you are syaing MsueScore's font size is different from every other program on your system, then there is a bug somewhere, and that is what I am trying to understand. Either your OS has a bug and is not communicating the font size setting correctly, or the other programs you use have a bug that causes them to ignore the OS setting, or MuseScore has a bug that causes it to ignore the font setting on your system. None of these should be happening, and all works perfectly on my system and most other people's systems, so something unique and unusual is going on with your system that casues one of those three things to be going on. But without more information, we cannot help figure out what is going on. If you want MuseScore to improve, please help us by providing the information I keep asking for. without it, we quite simply cannot help, because we don't understand the problem, and we cannot fix a problem we don't understand.

As I said, providing more options sounds nice, but it complicates the interface and makes the code harder to maintain. We would rather things *just work* without the need for such complications, and for most people, it does. Without your help, we will not be able to understand why the automatic setting does not seem to be working for you. It may well turn out to be something extremely simple - some setitng that is made incorrectly in your OS or whatever. But without your help, we cannot help solve the problem. Please let us help.

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• Nov 9, 2016 - 22:14

Marc, I don't believe I ever said that Musescore ignored my system font. It doesn't. I DOES in fact use my system font for the main parts of the UI. But when I open other palettes, Musescore (not me or my OS) reduces the size of the font. I believe this is normal and by design for those These are difficult (for me) to see. Also, even those parts of the UI that DO use the OS font, in the normal size, are not the easiest for me to use, because of just the way the UI is laid out, with ALL of the things (menus, symbols, etc.) that it contains. So, having had a wonderful option in the past version that allowed me to make the software enjoyable for ME to use, well now I miss that. I didn't think it was a big issue to include that old code in the next version. So there is no "problem" per se, as far as my OS not obeying the rules, so to speak. Rather, it's just an inconvenience for me to no longer be able to make Musescore enjoyable for me to use. So I'd love to have that function back again, if possible. Image attached: Green circled are my system font - identical. Red circled are all smaller - done by Musescore. I have all default settings form original MS2 install, so this is all done by Musescore default, never changed anything myself. MS_Screenshot.jpg

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• Nov 10, 2016 - 00:08

OK, thank you for explaining in more detail what is actually going on - this is all new information that was not at all clear from previous discussions.

So if I am understanding correctly, MuseScore *is* honoring the system font size, but it is only using that for the menu and some other elements, whereas other elements are using a smaller size. Windows actually allows you to define multiple sizes - separate settings for Title bars, Menus, Message boxes, Palette titles, Icons, and Tooltips. We apparently are not using most of these, and we should.

So the real fix is for us to start using the facilities actually provided by Windows for elements other than menus. That would be preferable to cluttering the UI and code with additional settings and and forcing users to have to workaround this failure of MsueScore to use the correct sizes by default. Would you mind submitting a formal feature request via the Issue Tracker for this?

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• Nov 11, 2016 - 12:41

Hi,
As asked by Iasconic, tested with 3543170 first making all windows 10 fonts bigger.
See attachedprint screen.
Menu is bigger, icons are bigger, title bar is bigger.
Palette are not changed, drop down list not and inspector not at all.
Also see print screen of MS-Word in which really everything is bigger.
Fred musescorefontsize.jpg wordfontsize.jpg

EDIT: by everything is bigger in MS-Word I don't mean bigger than MuseScore, I mean following correctly the OS settings, exactly as the parts of MuseScore which are bigger because they follow the OS setting.

EDIT2:
-There is no reset button in the settings of windows font size, so I had to reset them one by one (and to remember what was the default size for each of them).
-MS-Word adapts itself immediately to the change, I had to restart MuseScore to take the change into account.

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• Nov 22, 2016 - 05:07

Mark, I am having the identical issue, as I just mentioned in an older thread //musescore.org/en/node/54481#comment-603296 .

MuseScore is following the system sizing for *some* things, but not for the palette or dialog boxes. (running 2.0.3, Windows 10 on a Surface Pro 4). Those items remain painfully, unusably small regardless of any OS changes.

My resident IT guru says "Some of the fonts being used in MuseScore are scalable, while others are a fixed size. According to QT (the engine MuseScore appears to be using for cross-platform compatibility) this is the chief cause of the problem."

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• Nov 22, 2016 - 17:03

And yet, they do not.

Regardless of settings on my machine, the font size in the palette and dialog boxes in MuseScore 2.0.3 does not change. At all.

What more can I say that hasn't been said by me or others? I've stated my hardware, my OS, the MuseScore version, and what steps I've tried to resolve this. It is an issue with MuseScore and it makes it unusable.

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• Nov 22, 2016 - 20:40

Hmm, that should not be the case and isn't for me or for others. Are you*sure* you have changed the menu font size in Windows? Can you show screen shots demonstrating the issue? Assuming you really did change the correct font size, there just be something else unique going on with your system, but I can't guess what.

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• Nov 22, 2016 - 21:19

Yes, I'm sure. I've been fighting this issue for months, assuming it was my machine, since I never had trouble with prior versions of MuseScore.

Others are having this issue. My screen shots look just like what bill2reg and frfancha show above. The font size in the areas circled in red do not change in response to OS settings changes.

Perhaps you could look into the QT issue with scalable fonts. That's far more probable at this point, given what we know of this issue.

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• Nov 22, 2016 - 22:26

OK, I can reproduce on one of my systems. Even after increasing the "Menu" size in Windows, the palette and dialog fonts sizes do not follow as they should. Not sure what the key is here. Might be specific to Windows 10?

But on my system at least, even though the the size of the palettes and dialogs do not seem to respond to the menu size, the default is perfectly reasonable - in fact it is about the same size as most other applications. Including, as you can see here, the actual Windows dialog in which you set the font sizes:

Screenshot 2016-11-22 15.14.14.png

This is also the same size as the Start menu on my system, the same size as the palettes and dialogs in the Paint program I used to crop the above screenshot, also the same size as Google Chrome which is what I am using to post this - and so on. Nothing about MuseScore looks at all out of the ordinary. These other programs are hit and miss in terms of whether or not they appear to respond to any of these size settings, so also in that respect, MuseScore is not particularly unusual.

MuseScore *does* respond to changes in the overall scaling setting in Windows, BTW

So it's still a biut confusing to me why some people are perceiving a problem and others are not. Can others please test this as well, and let us know the results? Please state which OS. Could also be related to the screen DPI.

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• Nov 22, 2016 - 22:54

Hurrah! At least you can see what I'm talking about.

Unfortunately, I cannot see the palette words, because they render at about a font size of 5. (Surface Pro 4, Windows 10).

BTW, I do have my machine scaled to 200%, which is about as egregious as I can scale it before everything else looks hellacious. That's what has it looking like a font size 5. I have of course played around with scaling over the last few months, as one of the many, many things I've tried to remedy the issue. Scaling to 300% makes the palette font look about size 7.

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• Nov 23, 2016 - 03:41

Well, no, I'm not really seeing what you are. As I said, for me the size of MuseScore palette and dialogs is about the same as all other programs on my system. Can you post a screenshot comparing MuseScore to, for example, Google Chrome, or the Windows dialog I showed in my screenshot?

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• Nov 23, 2016 - 17:25

It's not a question of convincing, it's a question of understanding. I am trying to see the MuseScore dialog *in the same screenshot* as a dialog of known size so I can understand how they relate to each other. That is why I specifically showed the Windows font size dialog in my screen shot - so there is a basis for comparison. Somehow, things are working very differently on ylour machine than on mine, but since I can't stand behind you while you demonstrate to help me understand what might be unique and different about your system, that's why I am asking for a screenshot, in hopes that somehow it might shed light. Maybe it will provide some sort of clue that could help me understand why this works different on your system than on everyone else's. The screenshots posted by frfancha do not contain the necessary context either, and besides, they are using an experiment pre-release build, not the official 2.0.3 release, so they aren';t really helpful or relevant.

I'm trying to help, but since I cannot reproduce the problem you are seeing, I will need your help in understanding why your system is behaving differently than mine or other people's.

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• Nov 23, 2016 - 15:16

Marc,
If you could indicate me the places in the code where MuseScore reads the OS settings, computes the size for palette and displays a palette text, I will copy these parts to make a small test program and "play" with the different possibilities in Windows and QT settings to let you know what does/doesn't work on my Windows 10 laptop.
P.S.: I should be able to find these places in the code myself but as you already know the structure of the C++ files, your help will allow me to go quicker.

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• Nov 23, 2016 - 17:24

Unfortunately I no longer have a 2.0.3 build environment on my system, and the way the UI is set up has changed in current development builds, so I am not sure how to find the code right now. Maybe someone else can help?

What I remember from the last time I looked at this is, there was code using a Qt function to get the application font size as set in the OS, and this size was used for the menu and some other UI items. Other items took this size and then went down a notch, so that palettes and dialogs would be slightly smaller than the menus and other items. But I don't see code doing that in the current builds. Either my memory is off or the code has changed or both.

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