On Die, 2017-02-21 at 19:33 -0300, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
> Ok, seems we have yet another thread to keep discussing a same topic
> that I kinda started. Anyway, if the focus of the debate has changed
> indeed, I suggest changing the thread name and adding (was: "xxxx" <=
> old thread subject), in this case: (was: (wip) Preferences file).
>
> So, I did bring this up, how patches look differently in vanilla
> according to the operating system, and how they look different from
> extended / purr data (which, on their own, look consistent in all
> platforms and also look like each other!).
>
> Changing the font metrics from Vanilla to extended's/purr data's
> doesn't compromise the patch as the other way around does. Cause
> opening extended patches in the vanilla's metrics does compromise the
> visual experience a lot, creating all sorts of overlaps... I already
> pointed this out in the previous threads. 
>
> So, keeping it objective and not to repeat myself too much, I
> consider this an issue, an undesired behaviour, a bug, whatever, and
> I hope we could fix it. Any opposition? What is the best way to do
> this?

This is my view on the matter:

The primary goal is to make Pd(-vanilla)'s appearance consistent across
platforms. Part of that is that box sizes don't change when switching
platforms. As a side effect of this fix, patches also don't change
appearance when switching between Pd flavors (Do we still need to care
about Pd-extended, since it's been phased out?).

>From what I gathered from the "Pd Metrics on Xubuntu 16 04 02 LTS"
thread, the following steps are required to achieve that goal:

  * Adjustments of the font metrics. It seems we can just take the ones
    from Pd-extended.

  * Use the same font on all platforms. Pd apparently looks for "DejaVu
    Sans Mono" first, so that is the one we should make available
    everywhere.

On Linux, it's the task of Pd's package maintainers that DejaVu is
installed when Pd is to be installed. If I'm not mistaken, DejaVu is
installed per default on all Debian derivatives, so we do not have to
care about them. On Windows, the font is missing and the Pd installer
could be adapted to install the font along with Pd. On macOS, I don't
know what the required steps would be.

I propose that before we submit any fixes to Miller we are absolutely
certain that the adapted font metrics are correct in that the resulting
box sizes are consistent for all available font sizes (8, 10, 12, 16,
24, 36). And when testing this, we make sure that Pd uses "DejaVu Sans
Mono". Only then we submit any fix.

If we find good font metrics, I'll submit a fix to the NSIS installer
script, so that installing DejaVu is part of the Pd installation
process on Windows. Yet, I'm not sure whether it is enough to simply
drop the font files into %windir%\Fonts or whether the font needs to be
registered somewhere. 


Roman