Font change in Insert Character dialog?

lhuxley · 02-01-2016, 04:42 AM

Is there any way to change the font that Calibre uses in its Insert Character dialog? I would like to change the font to Gnu Unifont, so that I can at least see all available characters.

kovidgoyal · 02-01-2016, 11:55 AM

IIRC the font used for that is whatever font you have set for the calibre GUI in general. And changing it to unifont shouldn;t make any difference, since Qt by default uses font fallbacks if the specified fnot does not have a particular character.

lhuxley · 02-01-2016, 02:50 PM

Thanks Kovid,

You are correct. However, changing the interface font to Unifont is a terrible price to pay, since the font is totally unhinted and is almost illegible at 8 points. (And now that I've changed the default font away from "ms shell dlg 2", there doesn't seem to be any way to get it back.)

On Windows the font fallback scheme only seems to involve specially selected Microsoft fonts, so there are lots of holes in the special character tables.

PeterT · 02-01-2016, 10:42 PM

Try “Microsoft Sans Serif”

lhuxley · 02-05-2016, 01:54 AM

Apparently many Microsoft fonts don't have a glyph for ellipsis (..., which is used in the Calibre interface). Given the poor state of glyph mapping on Windows, nothing maps into its place, leaving black blobs at the ends of lines in Calibre.

I did try Microsoft Sans Serif, and it works fine. However I went digging and Microsoft says that the actual font mapping is to Tahoma, (which is perhaps their best hinted font for small text sizes).

02-01-2016, 04:42 AM	#1
lhuxley Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2015 Device: various	Font change in Insert Character dialog? Is there any way to change the font that Calibre uses in its Insert Character dialog? I would like to change the font to Gnu Unifont, so that I can at least see all available characters.

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02-01-2016, 11:55 AM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 44,356 Karma: 23708270 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	IIRC the font used for that is whatever font you have set for the calibre GUI in general. And changing it to unifont shouldn;t make any difference, since Qt by default uses font fallbacks if the specified fnot does not have a particular character.

02-01-2016, 02:50 PM	#3
lhuxley Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2015 Device: various	Thanks Kovid, You are correct. However, changing the interface font to Unifont is a terrible price to pay, since the font is totally unhinted and is almost illegible at 8 points. (And now that I've changed the default font away from "ms shell dlg 2", there doesn't seem to be any way to get it back.) On Windows the font fallback scheme only seems to involve specially selected Microsoft fonts, so there are lots of holes in the special character tables.

02-01-2016, 10:42 PM	#4
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,613 Karma: 74358024 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Libra H2O, Libra Colour	Try “Microsoft Sans Serif”

02-05-2016, 01:54 AM	#5
lhuxley Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2015 Device: various	Apparently many Microsoft fonts don't have a glyph for ellipsis (..., which is used in the Calibre interface). Given the poor state of glyph mapping on Windows, nothing maps into its place, leaving black blobs at the ends of lines in Calibre. I did try Microsoft Sans Serif, and it works fine. However I went digging and Microsoft says that the actual font mapping is to Tahoma, (which is perhaps their best hinted font for small text sizes).

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