Smaller console font

[duzenko]

I think the time has come to "do something" with the console text layout, prompted by user feedback on discord

I suppose since the original console was designed for 17` 4:3 screens, it does looks weird to modern eyes. What is the common setup these days - 24' 16:9? With increasing share of even wider and bigger screens.

As always, I'm willing to minimize the changes in the code (unless the change is deletion, which I can never have enough of )

Unless someone else wants to step up, I'd like to make the following changes

• configurable console line length (text buffer width), which would automatically make symbols narrower (or, quite unlikely, wider)
• configurable number of lines to show in the console -> make lines more dense or sparse
• maybe also allow the console to take 1/3, 2/3, etc vertical space when dealing with large amounts of text info
• unicode?

[stgatilov]

On 7/16/2021 at 2:14 AM, duzenko said:

configurable console line length (text buffer width), which would automatically make symbols narrower (or, quite unlikely, wider)
configurable number of lines to show in the console -> make lines more dense or sparse

I think it should be one setting, so that the font letters remain proportional (at least approximately).

Quote

maybe also allow the console to take 1/3, 2/3, etc vertical space when dealing with large amounts of text info

As far as I remember, there is already a way to open console for 1/3 of screen or even 1/4.
I don't see any need to make another shortcut for 2/3, especially if you are going to allow reducing font size.

Quote

unicode?

No way.
The whole engine uses 8-bit characters, Unicode will break just everything.

[MirceaKitsune]

+1. I'm not a fan of the overly large console font. I wouldn't want it to be too tiny either, but definitely a bit smaller than this.

Also is there a reason why we make the normal console font cyan? It doesn't look very appealing. I'd prefer normal text being white, colorized only for errors (red) or warnings (yellow) or the other types of colors used only for specific messages (cyan could be given its own category of info prints).

[duzenko]

At revision: 9531

Before

[url=https://ibb.co/NpGS84Q][img]https://i.ibb.co/P4VQ7S3/image.png[/img][/url]

https://ibb.co/NpGS84Q

After

[url=https://ibb.co/Yt2PKbc][img]https://i.ibb.co/MRnZj9c/image.png[/img][/url]

https://ibb.co/Yt2PKbc

You can see that the left margin is gone - is it ok?

@stgatilovI think some of the new code might be unsafe - I got an AV at some point but couldn't reproduce ever since

I also understand that we generally don't want to use std::wstring? I'm just not sure what should be a better alternative - idList<short>?

[MirceaKitsune]

I definitely like the later appearance better! Could be even a tad smaller IMHO, though the new version is good.

Would it be alright to ask for a screenshot with the cyan font turned to white too? Was curious to at least see if that feels better. I know that's a slightly different matter, sorry if I'm conflating two similar but unrelated issues here.

[duzenko]

4 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:

I definitely like the later appearance better! Could be even a tad smaller IMHO, though the new version is good.

It accepts all font sizes now

8 is default

7 is on the screenshot abover

Never went beyond 6 which already feels too small

Quote

Would it be alright to ask for a screenshot with the cyan font turned to white too? Was curious to at least see if that feels better. I know that's a slightly different matter, sorry if I'm conflating two similar but unrelated issues here.

I kinda like cyan. Will need more votes for that.

[peter_spy]

Smaller font looks good, on a 24" screen it could be even smaller, but if it's tweakable, that's great. I don't mind the current color (that saturation though...). If anything, it has to be versatile enough to work on both light and dark backgrounds, so white and black are off the table by default.

[duzenko]

New key shortcut

Ctrl+Shift+~ opens console at 80% height

Two new cvars

r_smallCharSpacing - font spacing

con_fontColor - index or rgb

[AluminumHaste]

As long as I can use Comic Sans as my font, I'm down with any changes you want!

[duzenko]

1 hour ago, AluminumHaste said:

As long as I can use Comic Sans as my font, I'm down with any changes you want!

You can use any font if you replace the font texture file

[MirceaKitsune]

If both the font size and color can be customized, I am a happy player: If I don't like the new defaults I'll write my own in autoexec.cfg. Can't wait for the next dev snapshot, now for yet another reason... the past few months / weeks have been amazing for TDM