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Display Font Size

Depending on your eyes and your screen, you may want to adjust the font size that Interrogator uses to display with to make it larger or smaller. If your eyesight is good,you might want a smaller size to see more text on your screen. If you're getting a bit older, or your screen has very dense resolution, you should adjust the font size larger. All the icons and everything else will scale upward or downward along with the font size.

  X11 MacOS
Larger display font altL altG ^L ^G
two steps larger altL altL altG ^L ^L ^G
smaller display font altS altG ^S ^G
three steps smaller altS altS altS altG ^S ^S ^S ^G


These commands allow three sizes larger than the default, and three sizes smaller; seven size settings in all. The settings apply simultaneously to all windows - the altG command controls Global settings.

For more control, you can edit the preferences file. This file has not only the full range of sizes, but also the font family name. If you save the file while Interrogator is running, and it notices that the file date changes, it will re-read the file and update the display with any new fonts or sizes you've chosen.

  X11 MacOS
edit prefs file altP altO p r e f s / ^P ^O p r e f s /
keystroke quick reference altU altI ^U ^I


Interrogator uses three sizes at any given time.
Body Size: size for filenames and most other text
Heading Size: larger fonts for Full Disclosure headings, etc
Detail Size: smaller font for details, mostly in Inspector window
You can see all three at once in the keystroke reference.

The preference file lists nine sizes that you can change; three of them are the default Body, Heading and Detail sizes. When you choose Larger Display Font, all of the sizes shift up by one; that is, the former Body size is now used as the Detail size,and the former Heading size now becomes the Body size. A new, larger font size is used for headings.

This chart shows how the size setting you choose by keystroke dictates the size out of the preference file that's used for the three different text sizes.

font size as chosen by keystroke

preference name
in .tint/prefs

default
size

three smaller two smaller one smaller default one larger two larger three larger

SmallestSize

6

detail

SmallerSize

7

body detail

SmallSize

8

heading body detail

DetailSize

10

heading body detail

BodySize

12

heading body detail

HeadingSize

14

heading body detail

BigSize

18

heading body detail

BiggerSize

20

heading body

BiggestSize

24

heading



Note that different systems handle fonts differently. Usually, MacOS X systems are more smooth than X11 systems, but there are exceptions, and a lot depends on the specific font family you choose. There's so many situations that it's hard to predict what problems you will have. Here are some pathologies you may run into:

- Some font families don't draw larger than a certain maximum. This may show up when you ask for a larger size, but the size doesn't change. Other times, the text will draw small glyphs in a large glyph box - you will see lots of white space between the characters in a line, and between the lines.

- Some font families don't draw smaller than a certain minimum. This may show up when you ask for a smaller size, but the size doesn't change. Other times, the text might draw in other ways, they might lose so much resolution that they be read, or might even disappear.

- Some font families only come in specific sizes, and attempts to draw sizes in between have problems. This is common for bitmapped fonts. For instance, a font might be fine in sizes 14 and 18, but might have no size 16. Attempting to draw in size 16 may yield either size 14 or size 18, or perhaps size 14, 18 or 8 stretched to size 16. Stretching typically creates a rough, jagged appearance.

In all of these cases, try a different font family, or attempt to find sizes that work correctly and stick to them.

Sometimes the font size numbers are interpreted as points, which are usually about 1/72 inch in absolute distance. Other times, they are interpreted as pixels. The original Macintosh screen was assumed to be 72 pixels per inch, even when it wasn't, which was convenient. Because it was used for desktop publishing, therefore printing on paper, the effective paper size was most important. Most screens these days have a higher resolution, and printing on paper is less important. Most systems these days cannot tell the absolute size of a video or flatpanel monitor, only the number of pixels wide and high. One way or another, a font that claims to be 12 points could easily show up on the screen as being 16 or 24 pixels high. Your best bet is to simply experiment with your system until you like what you see.

You might also notice on Unix/Linux systems that the font family names vary from one program to another. For instance, one program might list "Helvetica" but another might list "Adobe Helvetica". You may have to try both in the preference file until you get something that works. If the font name you specify isn't found or is somehow 'misspelled' according to the rules, you will instead get a default font.



Icon Density

The sparse and dense commands change the packing density of files in a directory window. It's easiest to see starting with the most sparse setting.

Interrogator draws the files in descending columns, starting from the upper left corner. Ideally, all the files would be the same size and their names would all be the same length. Unfortunately, many have long names - often the limit on filename length is 255 characters.

Interrogator deals with this by allowing long names to extend to the right. Subsequent columns simply have a gap to avoid these long names. When this happens a lot, the resulting display can appear scattered. Gaps are so large that it appears more like isolated strips of files in a jumble.

To avoid this, Interrogator allows you to adjust the column width. A wider column width will appear more tidy, but will use up more screen area. A tighter column width will pack files in more densely, but will look more chaotic due to all of the gaps.

An interesting phenomenon also happens at dense column widths when the average file ends up needing two or three column widths. It can appear that the column width changes chaotically, but in fact, various files are being laid out with two or three column widths being used. This can be confusing.

Note also that the density setting varies from one directory to another, as the filename lengths vary.

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