Font size is too large by default

Bug #391190 reported by Matthew Paul Thomas
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
notify-osd (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Mirco Müller

Bug Description

Binary package hint: notify-osd

1. Log in to a guest session.
2. At a terminal, enter: notify-send -i face-smile "Title text" "Body text"

What should happen, according to <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD#Title%20text>:
* "The title should be the standard application font size"
* "The body should be 0.8 × the standard application font size".

What actually happens:
* The title is larger than the standard application font size (for example, the cap height is 12 pixels when it should be 10)
* The body text is too large too.

Related branches

Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Mirco Müller (macslow) wrote :

I fixed several things in the pixels-per-em calculation (there should be no more rounding errors) and I set the factors for title- and body-text back to 1.0 and 0.8. With that this (see attachment) is what I get from your example.

I'm not sure what I should regard for text-height there. The l, i or T or G.

In that screenshot I use "Sans 10" and a DPI of 100. Bubble title-text size is 1 EM and body-text size is 0.8 EM.

Revision history for this message
Mirco Müller (macslow) wrote :

Because there once was a discussion between using 1.2 EMs (title), 1.0 EMs (body) and 1.0 EMs (title), 0.8 (body) I provide a side-by-side comparison of both settings with the recently fixed EM- and font-height calculation code of notify-osd trunk. I just want to avoid coming back to this later, should you design-folks go "Ah, let's see that with the other setting" :)

Revision history for this message
Mat Tomaszewski (mat.t.) wrote : Re: [Bug 391190] Re: Font size is too large by default

Mirco Müller wrote:
> Because there once was a discussion between using 1.2 EMs (title), 1.0
> EMs (body) and 1.0 EMs (title), 0.8 (body) I provide a side-by-side
> comparison of both settings with the recently fixed EM- and font-height
> calculation code of notify-osd trunk. I just want to avoid coming back
> to this later, should you design-folks go "Ah, let's see that with the
> other setting" :)
>
> ** Attachment added: "comparison between 1.0/0.8 and 1.2/1.0"
> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/28282384/compare.png
>
>
Thanks for that Mirco

Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

Mirco, to make the notification bubble text fit with the text in the rest of Gnome, Notify OSD needs to use the same DPI value as the rest of Gnome. Currently Gnome is hard-coded to 96 dpi, though that is likely to change to the Xorg-supplied value during Karmic. Notify OSD needs to keep in sync with that calculation, i.e. hard-code 96 dpi whenever Gnome is doing so. Until you do that, neither of the font size choices -- 1.0✕ and 0.8✕, or 1.2✕ and 1.0✕ -- will match up with the rest of Ubuntu.

Revision history for this message
Mirco Müller (macslow) wrote :

I let the screenshot speak for itself :)

Mirco Müller (macslow)
Changed in notify-osd (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Mirco Müller (macslow)
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: New → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package notify-osd - 0.9.15-0ubuntu1

---------------
notify-osd (0.9.15-0ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * New upstream version:
    - fixed wrong default values for bubble-width, margin- and icon-size
    - fixed regressions introduced by the move to the surface- and blur-cache
    - improved drawing of gauge/indicator
    - tweaked rendering of layout-grid, added display of layout-grid to
      debug-mode of notify-osd
    - refactored rendering code for bubble
    - migrated rendering of drop-shadow, background, icon, title,
      body and gauge to surface/blur-cache
    - added surface- and blur-cache
    - added debug-output for font-size, screen-dpi, pixels/EM and
      bubble-width in pixels
    - fixed rounding errors in pixel-per-em calculation, changed default bubble
      width to 24 EMs, fixed title- and body-text height,
      fixes LP: #336110 and LP: #391190

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:46:15 +0200

Changed in notify-osd (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Max Bowsher (maxb) wrote :

Having installed this fix, I would say that the font size is now too small by default - before I would have described it as well proportioned for its purpose, now it is excessively small. I note that the motivation for the change here was to comply with specs, not responding to user complaints from notify-osd as deployed in Jaunty.

I would suggest that making the body text *smaller* than the default application font size, for a bubble which the user must read quickly before it disappears, is a poor choice.

Perhaps switching to 1.2x/1.0x would be a good first step.

Changed in notify-osd (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Released → New
Revision history for this message
Mat Tomaszewski (mat.t.) wrote :

@ Max Bowsher, thanks for your comment, but there's not much point going back and forth with this issue like that. This bug has been fixed, if in your opinion the font size is still incorrect, please do file a new bug.

Changed in notify-osd (Ubuntu):
status: New → Fix Released
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