On Jan 22, 2012, at 11:55 PM, Pete wrote:
> I just compiled and ran my fist standalone on Windows and I'm finally
> realising the benefits of developing cross platform applications with LC.
> I was pretty amazed when everything I developed on my Mac just ran as
> expected on Windows!
>
> The on;y problem I need to address concerns fonts. I have a very few
> controls that depend on font size to correctly position themselves around
> other, non-textobjects and it seems that LC's default font on WIndows is
> different than on a Mac, or at least the font size/spacing is.
>
> I left the font and size blank in almost all of my controls' text
> formatting options but perhaps I need to name a specific font to have
> things line up correctly on OS X and Windows?
Are you setting font names anywhere in your app or are you defaulting to the
system fonts for everything? There are generally three schools of thought on
font/platform management:
1) Use LC's built in property profiles. It's been a long time since I used
them, and I came up with my own solution, so I don't really know the pros and
cons. (Maybe someone else could fill this in?)
2) Pick a font that will be on all your target systems, and set the font of
your stack(s) to that font, allowing it to be inherited by all cards and card
objects.
- Pros: Easy to set up and implement
- Cons: Significant limitations on font choices; your controls will not
end up being displayed in OS-compliant fonts; every control that has a separate
style (like bold) will break the inheritance and you'll have to set those
manually.
3) Set the font for your controls by hand, based on platform.
- Pros: More control over what's happening; can apply the same text
attributes to multiple objects by code without having to set individual
properties on the controls (unless you want to)
- Cons: Takes a little time to code and set up
I have been using for a long time a frontscript that traps 'preOpenCard', and
then just runs through the controls on the card in a repeat loop, setting the
appropriate text attributes. For those controls that need custom styling (like
bold, etc.), I check a custom property set and apply the styles/sizes/colors if
it has them. Here's a scaled-down example of what I mean:
-- Frontscript
on preOpenCard
repeat with x = 1 to the number of controls of this card
put the customProperties["uTextAttribs"] of control x of this card into
tAttribsA
put "font,style,size,color" into tAttribs
repeat for each item tAttrib in tAttribs
if tAttribsA[tAttrib] <> "" then
do "set the text" & tAttrib && "of control x of this card to
tAttribsA[tAttrib]"
else
do "set the text" & tAttrib && "of control x of this card to
TextAttribs(tAttrib)"
end if
end repeat
end repeat
pass preOpenCard
end preOpenCard
function TextAttribs pAttrib
put "font,style,size,color" into tAttribs
switch (the platform)
case "MacOS"
put "Lucida Grande,plain,12,black" into tSysAttribs
break
case "Win32"
if (word 2 of the systemVersion) > 5.1 then
put "Segoe UI,plain,12,black" into tSysAttribs
else
put "Tahoma,plain,11,black" into tSysAttribs
end if
break
end switch
return item (itemOffset(pAttrib,tAttribs)) of tSysAttribs
end TextAttribs
Obviously this doesn't handle a bunch of situations, isn't optimized, and is
primarily meant to give you an idea how this can work. But LC is so fast that
even with dozens of controls, the time to set the properties is not noticeable.
Hope this helps,
Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software, Inc.
Email: k...@sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
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