Version: 1.3.0_devel (using KDE 3.4.0, compiled sources) Compiler: gcc version 3.4.3 OS: SunOS (sun4u) release 5.8 Note that I'm using a remote connection to a Sun via Cygwin/XFree, which may be part of the reason why font sizes are what they are. I'm mentioning this just in case it has an influence, but I tend to believe this is a general problem. When putting plots on grids, the reference font size (corresponding to "0" in the spinbox) seems to decrease too fast: - create a window with 1 plot: it is quite OK - create a window with 2x2 plots: still works - create a window with 3x3 plots: fonts are too small (and axis values as well) I understand the general need to keep as much room as possible for the curves themselves, but kst is currently too "aggressive". From a usability point of view, I think it is worse to have to change font sizes or maximize a plot to be able to read the text (axis name, values or legend) than having a somewhat smaller curve. To make this a bit more factual, looking at the height of legend text in pixels here is what I get for size = 0, base font size = 20 (as set in the default settings) and text in capital letters without accents nor "legs" i.e. text below the baseline: - 1 plot per window: 15 pixels - 2x2 plots: 7 pixels - 3x3 plots: 6 pixels (which I'd say is the absolute readability limit) - 4x4 plots: 4 pixels For information, the full height of a window in my case (from just below the tabs to just above the status bar) is 625 pixels. Note that the size of axis labels, legends and axis values are quite consistent (they are all too small !), which is good and needs to be preserved (they will all be large enough :-).
This seems okay to me. I suspect this is largely a matter of personal preference and further complicated by such things as screen resolution, window size, etc.
This is WYSISOWYG at work. The labels are scaling with the size of the plot. Once upon a time, when we would create multiple plots, we would create them with larger label sizes. The problem here is that if you add a plot, then you are all confused (plots added earlier may have a different label size than plots added later). I think it is important to have the label sizes scale linearly with the size of the plot, so.... we are stuck with this. If you typically create windows with many plots, you can go ahead and change the default font size in settings->configure kst.
Wait, wait, wait... I also think that plots created at different times should have the same sizes. But why do you think it is important to scale fonts down linearly with plot size ? Even so, why not decide that 6 pix is the minimum and scale (even linearly, but it could be prabolic or cubic I don't care) down from the default font size to 6 ? To me, it is very important to try hard to have readable text ! Adjusting the base font size is only halfways satisfying (I already have 20 as default, and with few plots it is quite big !). Maybe a compromise could be to add in the kst settings a minimum font size ?
Agreed: lets add Min Font Size to kst settings.
Thanks :-)
Created attachment 16797 [details] Proposed patch
SVN commit 555499 by arwalker: BUG:129256 Allow user to enforce a minimum font size M +8 -9 libkstapp/kstplotlabel.cpp M +240 -168 libkstapp/kstsettingsdlg.ui M +5 -0 libkstapp/kstsettingsdlg.ui.h M +9 -14 libkstapp/kstviewlabel.cpp M +9 -14 libkstapp/kstviewlegend.cpp M +4 -0 libkstmath/kstsettings.cpp M +1 -0 libkstmath/kstsettings.h