After I reboot my machine, Microsoft Expression Blend 4 spends about 10 minutes loading every single font in C:\Windows\Fonts into some font cache (I determined this by watching its activity using Procmon). The application is unusable until this rather pointless operation completes. Is there any way to tweak Blend to stop it from doing this?
Doubtful. Whenever you have a text based property, you can change the font of that text in Blend. To do so, you get a list of fonts with each font name rendered in that font. Seems like you would need all of the fonts in the cache to be able to perform this operation.
Related
So I have a big 32 inch display with a resolution of 1440p, and I want to set the DPI scaling to 75% instead of 100%. But I can't find any way to do so on multiple monitors.
I currently have:
Display 1 [2560 x 1440] (Main display I want to change)
Display 2 [2560 x 1440] (This one is 27 inches so it's fine as is)
Display 3 [3840 x 2160] (Set to 100%, fine as it is)
This trick (click me) changes DPI scaling via some registry keys (LogPixels & Win8DpiScaling), but when I use that trick it downscales display 3 instead of display 1.
Is there a way to get this to work? I see no reason for Microsoft to limit the scaling in displays.
Note: I have a 2070 super, all the displays are plugged into the GPU via displayport directly, with the latest avalible firmware at the time of writing (september 2021)
The tl;dr:
Technical limitations aside, there are very solid user experience reasons why this probably isn't allowed.
No, Windows will not let you set UI scaling below 100%.
(even if a stable workaround were to be discovered, most users would probably be quite unhappy with the results)
While I would love¹ to be proven incorrect, the implications of scaling at less than 100% are so fraught that this limitation is unlikely to change in the near future.
Background:
This has been the case for ages, likely since Windows first introduced the feature.
Compatibility with current software
The only ~purely technical~ reason I can think of:
The 100% scaling size likely uses the smallest base image (e.g. Explorer and Taskbar icons, mouse and text cursors) resources included in various existing Microsoft and 3rd-party applications.
User experience
Going below the 100% point may cause small UI text and icons, especially in application toolbars and the Taskbar to be blurred to the point of ambiguity.
Those fine lines in the taskbar 'Windows' menu icon? Blurred or gone.
Taken to the extreme, the UI ~might~ become so unreadable that the user is effectively prevented from being able to read the text even in the 'Settings' window and therefore is 'stuck': i.e. not able to navigate through 'Settings' to restore the original '100%' scaling mode.
(Luckily, Windows is never used to run any SCADA software where confusing two icons could theoretically cost money or lives.)
Performance:
Since those carefully-designed graphic assets don't exist, if sub-100% scaling were allowed, it would also likely cause extra CPU/GPU workload - that is why only certain fixed sizes of up-sampling are shown on the normal Display settings screen and why the Advanced scaling settings screen warns that custom scaling between 100-500% is "not recommended".
That might also apply to any fixed scaling option offered below 100%, and absolutely would for custom scaling sizes.
Some people enjoy reading:
Vector-based TrueType/OpenType fonts usually contain a ~lot~ of manual tweaking / hints to enable readable display of very small point sizes.
The marketing department & friends of the C-suite
Could they implement this at a limited range of options? 90%? 75%?
Perhaps - but it's extra testing for a horrible-looking edge case.
The existence of the option, even if only available as a registry hack, might cause some people to actually use it in kiosks and other public-facing displays; this risks the same sort of bad PR as when a BSOD is seen on the 'arrivals' screen at a train station or airport monitor.
Combined with the first example below, even a 90% option could cause trouble in some environments.
Example and tutorial:
Imagine how Windows might look displayed on one of those cheapo '1080p-supported' projectors that actually only contains an imager with a native pixel resolution of, say, 1024x576 (or even 480x234).
Windows thinks it can send 1080p, since that what the HDMI connection advertises, so it does: any text / vector content looks atrocious.
(At least in this case the user could normally² unplug the projector and reconnect to a normal monitor to restore functionality.)
See for yourself... while connected to any monitor (at that monitor's native resolution), with Windows set to 100% scaling:
Open Windows Notepad
Type or paste in any block of text
Now, use the Zoom Out command from the View menu³ five or more times in a row
While not an exact analogue, you may still see how hard it could be to read down-sampled text, even when very high-contrast (the best-case scenario).
¹: As someone currently typing this very answer on a 1080p connection to a 55" 4K television as a second monitor, I came across the question very much hoping this was possible. Sadly, logic intervened and killed my potential joy.
²: Unless the computer is actually stored somewhere locked or inaccessible, such as a NUC-style PC hidden above the false ceiling in a conference room.
³: Alternatively, press <CTRL>-<Minus> five or more times.
I have a PowerPoint template. When this template was passed off It included some special fonts that I needed to remove because it was throwing warnings when users opened them up.
When I use the "replace fonts" feature it does not remove the font. I deal a lot with the XML properties of these templates because some of the content is generated dynamically when a report is run. I can still see in the slides the font is present
<a:buFont typeface="Poppins"/> the other is <a:buFont typeface="Noto Sans Symbols"/>
Which both appear to be bullet list fonts? There are no lists in the view though...
Removing it from the XML itself is not an option because when I update the template again it will override that and given that doesn't happen often I will have forgotten all about this. I need to fix this in the template so I can then export it out.
I have edited all the text I can see to either Ariel or Calibri but this Poppins font is still in there and I have no idea how to get it out.
Specifics are
Powerpoint version is 16.36
The program is actually Powerpoint for Mac (if that matters)
If anyone solved a similar issue and can give me some direction it would be much appreciated.
The buFont tag means that font is being used for a bullet rather than actual text. Probably a text level somewhere uses a custom bullet specced with this font. Each content or text placeholder can have up to 9 text levels, you may hove to create 9 levels using Home>Indent More to find the right one.
Start with the Slide Master (View>Slide Master>the larger thumbnail at the top). Then check each placeholder on each Layout (smaller thumbnails below the Master). Finally, check each multilevel placeholder on each slide, in case this was added with local formatting.
My go-to technique is to unzip the presentation into the XML files and do a find and replace on them. That's the quickest way to replace fonts, which can be tucked away in all kinds of obscure places in a presentation. On a Mac, this takes a bit of preparation to avoid problems caused by the OS. If you regularly create PowerPoint files, it may be worth it to set this up. Here's my article on this: OOXML Hacking: Editing in macOS. Look for the part about using a USB or network drive that is set to not create hidden .DS_Store files. Then use a text editor like BBEdit to do multi-file find and replace operations on the font name.
I have PowerPoint 16.39 on my MacBook Pro. Try to click on PowerPoint in the upper left. Then Preferences, then the Save icon. At the bottom you'll have Font Embedding. If you un-check this option, it should not save fonts to the template anymore.
Some weeks ago a user reported that the GUI of my program was shrink.
Today I started my laptop in multi-monitor mode and could reproduce the problem: at windows start up, the size of the main form was 325x243 pixels instead of 648x700.
I have no single line of code that controls the width/height of the form. The position is set like this: MainForm.Position:= poDefault. The user cannot resize the form ( BorderStyle:= bsSingle ).
What could cause such weirdness?
It is the second time when I start my laptop with additional monitors attached. The first time everything was ok. Could it be related to this multi-monitor configuration?
If the compiler generates no code related to form's size then it is like some external program injected code into my program to change its size. It is plausible. There are programs that are doing so in order to control how windows are spread over multiple monitors. I have one of them installed but it is not running at Windows start up.
The position is set like this: MainForm.Position:= poDefault
And that is the answer.
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/XE4/en/Vcl.Forms.TForm.Position
The form appears in a position on the screen and with a height and width determined by the operating system.
However there are other options like
poDefaultPosOnly: The form displays with the size you created it at design time, but the operating system chooses its position on the screen
poScreenCenter: The form remains the size you left it at design time, but is positioned in the center of the screen.
And many others.
Additionally, you may avoid fixing the issue and add a workaround instead: just set the form size fixed using http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/XE4/en/Vcl.Forms.TForm.Constraints
There seems no way to change font size or style in code, right?? It seems the only way is to duplicate the font files and load them all when program starts??
Thanks
SpriteFonts convert a font, with style, size, and other parameters, to a pixel-based format for use as a texture within XNA. Those pixels are static, so yes, there is no way to change them, short of looping through per pixel.
However there is scaling (though it won't look so great scaling larger) to help with size adjustments needed, plus you could, like you said, create multiple SpriteFont files from the same base font for different styles, and dynamically choose one of those sprite font "textures" within your code.
Beyond that, for true fully dynamic runtime usage, you'd need to essentially create these sprite font textures on the fly, in memory. This means you'd have to do what the SpriteFont Content Pipeline project does but at runtime instead. This is possible in WinForms, but as far as I know not really an option for WP7 as you apparently are using.
I'm developing a Vista/Win7 Desktop Gadget that uses a translucent g:background (doc) area with g:text (doc) on top. I'm adding the text via addTextObject (doc), and this all works as expected.
However, I can't figure out how to set that text to bold style. There doesn't seem to be a way to do this directly via the exposed properties that I can see, and I can't use regular text + CSS in this case due to the fact this text is placed onto a g:background object.
I have also tried specifying a bold font directly, such as Arial Bold (doesn't work) instead of Arial (works).
So how can this be done?
Edit: I have tried setting font-weight:bold for both the body and the g:background object that parents my text; no luck.
See Flip Calendar, by Jonathan Abbott. His code is usually well commented so maybe you can get some ideas from that.
EDIT
The source of my information was from the early days of Vista Beta 2 where that was the official word from MS. I also found the following response to a thread on the MSDN forums regarding the Flip Calendar gadget itself:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sidebargadfetdevelopment/thread/841e9d5e-32e9-453f-bd0e-dc5a4e607c33/
The gadget has options for setting bold font on the day of the month (a g:text object) but on closer inspection it doesn't work. Sorry about that. The MS guys have been known to be wrong as well on one or more occasions. I can honestly say that I don't use the g:text object.
This means your only (well, non activex route) option is VML text, which provides a lot of flexibility on layout. However, you will have to place it on a fully opaque area of the gadget which is probably why you wanted to use the addTextObject in the first place. Gary Beene's site really helped me out when I was getting started, but it doesn't go into any detail on the v:textbox element and the v:textpath element, though the MSDN documentation goes into enough detail on these.
If you need to place the text on a non-fully opaque area of the gadget, then you could still go the VML route and place an image behind the text that acts as a shadow, starting out fully opaque and fading to fully transparent. This is how Microsoft does text in window title bars with aero enabled.
Alternatively, you could create an ActiveXObject that draws the text you need in the font you want and saves the image to a temporary file in the gadget folder. Then you set that to the src of an addImageObject. I've done something similar in a gadget and it's fast enough not to be noticeable. You can also set min/max dimensions so shrinking/stretching to fit becomes a breeze.