Reaper v7 Fonts and making space for them

[airon]

Current use case

I use a 109 dpi monitor at about 80+ cm distance. A 27 inch, 2560x1440 display.

The default themes "Walter font 1" (seen in this screenshot) affects the MCP and TCP for the sends,insert and paramet knob descriptions. The text display at 100% is pretty minuscule, so I use a different font and font size for Walter Font 1. DejaVu Sans narrow 9. Here's a screenshot of the result

The reason I bring this up is that I cannot really go larger than that without bumping up against the limitations of the insert/send and parameter knob area size.

Those areas do not scale with the font size. This is the problem for users like myself who needs to have a lot of stuff in view on their screen but also need clear text.

The current theme technology, i.e. the code and design behind what's possible here does not cover my needs, because it cannot scale between 100% and 150% in the areas that contain the elements I wish to scale beyong the bounds of the 100% setup. Most plugin guis today do that, either in 25% increments or continously(vector stuff?).

Request

The request I'd like to put in for v7 of Reaper is that it facilitates finer scaling or even continous scaling, by whatever means, because the 1440p users are plentiful, and the chunky 150% setup is less efficient than perhaps a 125% setup could be.

[Never]

Currently the scaling of those is controlled in Rtconfig, meaning to succesfully rescale an extended mixer slot and it's text means a coordinated effort of both WALTER font setting in the tweaker AND adjusting values in Rtconfig. So your saying you want REAPER to automatically rescale actual extmixer elements based on the font size you choose in the theme tweaker?
Just trying to understand.

[White Tie]

Sounds like you should be using the 150% scale.

[White Tie]

Originally Posted by airon

This is the problem for users like myself who needs to have a lot of stuff in view on their screen but also need clear text... the chunky 150% setup is less efficient than perhaps a 125% setup could be.

Your screenshots all look correct.

If I understand this correctly, what you want is to have an ultra-compact theme, and you're trying to do this by running the default theme too small, so small you can't read the text, and then trying to fix that by increasing the size of the text. Its not supposed to do that, so yeah I'm not surprised its not working, I'm afraid its never going to, that's not its thing, right?

The default theme is designed to be flexible, but its not infinitely flexible, everything is a compromise. I'm not sure why you're mentioning Reaper v7, we're nowhere near that unless you know something I don't, but I'm pretty sure the default theme isn't going to be ultra compact for v7, nor indeed for v8 or probably ever.

I did 'small' layouts for the default 5 theme, which were compact-ish, and as far as I could tell no one ever used them. If you want an ultra-compact theme, that's a niche requirement but I believe people have made some if you look around.

[bFooz]

+1 for 125% scaling.

I use 1440p monitor as well, 25inch. While I am still able to see native stuff I prefer to scale plugins to 125%. I never use more than that, things become huge.

[White Tie]

As previously discussed, I'm not going to do 125%. I arguably should have done 133% instead of 150%, but even then I'm not convinced. We've all got to compromise a little bit, I'm afraid.

[airon]

150% uses too much space overall for me and my screen size and resolution. Total goner for efficiency for almost everything I do. I tried it out. I don't use multiple monitors for accoustic reasons as well. My room isn't that big to spread everything around either.

The following may be more of a request for the devs. I realize I've been asking for too much.

I don't actually have a problem with most of the elements of the 100% theme. It works just fine for almost everything I do and the assembler scripts lets you swap out stuff as you please, so the only problem I have is that particular box of elements on the MCP, which now also lives on the TCP in a different looking way.

What I'm pining for is customizing the elements that don't work for me.


Scaling the insert/send/paramknobs area on the MCP/TCP.

The elements such as the mcp_fxparam*.png set would support flexible heights. No need to change the system beyond that.


Oh and I suggested v7 because this would be big deal, not because I planted a bug in Justins office :P .

-edit-
Request posted here: https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=269820

[White Tie]

You can already change those things, that's theming.

[airon]

Originally Posted by White Tie

You can already change those things, that's theming.

The height of the left-hand side of the sidecar MCP layout can be modified ?

If you're referring to editing the rtconfig.txt , that seems feasable. But I'm likely never going to touch it. Far too much work. Some folks are great at it, but I'm neither much of a script writer nor a theme developer.

[White Tie]

Yes, its all theming and nothing more. For the WALTERable areas (MCP/TCP/EnvCP/Transport) they are just layouts of different sizes, created entirely in the theme, and Reaper's HiDPI functionality chooses between those layouts for those areas.

Further Reading.

[oneammonday]

I'm saving up to buy the biggest monitor/TV I can afford. No amount of theme tweaking will fix my ancient eyes.