Editor typeface size...

flip's Avatar

flip

25 Feb, 2014 08:25 PM

I find it ever so frustrating that I cannot easily / directly change the size of the type used in the editor window. In fact, in a perfect world I would prefer to use the composer as more of a 'viewer' ala Marked than having to endure yet another editor and its idiosyncrasies. Is that possible?

  1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Fletcher on 25 Feb, 2014 08:42 PM

    Fletcher's Avatar

    I'm not quite sure I follow you.

    Do you mean being able to highlight a section of text and changing its
    font/size? This behavior is part of "word processors" (e.g. Word), but
    not text editors. Composer is a text editor, not a word processor. You
    can use the style sheets/themes to consistently style sections of the
    document according to function (e.g. make all headers bold), but you
    can't arbitrarily apply styling to random words (this would be counter
    to the entire philosophy of Markdown/MultiMarkdown).

    You can very easily zoom in/out to increase/decrease the apparent size
    of the font on screen. This affects the entire document at once.

    You can also change the default font/size for all documents in the
    preferences, but some style sheets override this font/size preference,
    in which case you would have to modify the style sheet.

    If you have certain setups that you like (e.g. this font and this size
    for these documents, that font/size for those documents), then that is
    the perfect time to use the style sheets to apply your preferred
    settings to the document you're using.

    As for using Composer as a 'viewer', I'm not quite sure what you mean there.

    If you clarify a bit more, perhaps I can offer better advice.

    Thanks!

    Fletcher

  2. 2 Posted by flip on 25 Feb, 2014 08:56 PM

    flip's Avatar

    Yep, as a user of editors / markup languages dating back to teco / roff, I’m pretty clear on the difference between word processors and text editors.

    I use Sublime (sometimes Emacs) to edit 75% of my markdown. I suppose that, while I like the setup of Composer, I find that using a stylesheet to change the text editing portion of the program a bit befuddling. I want to edit using a monospace, 16pt typeface, yet, when I change that (Yes I see the great big “this stuff may not do anything” warning) it does nothing in my current configuration. (well, the typeface changes, not the size, but the typeface, yes). I’m presuming this is because both the text-editing pane -and- the output depend on CSS sorts of things. Of course the CSS idea is -great- for output, I have a few styles I use regularly, as you mention, but on the editor side I find the idea a little less exciting I suppose.

    As for what I mean by a viewer-

    Right now I have a few scripts that grind my multimarkdown into whatever it needs to be, but while I’m editing I tend to use Marked as a ‘viewer/renderer’ of the MMD I am writing in Sublime. Sadly, Marked doesn’t really work for everything I’d like (e.g. output) since it has a very web-centric (not document-centric) idea of what the output of MMD should be (eg- pagination is a bit of an issue, can’t dump to LaTeX if I’d like, etc etc). So, I have to manually grind things through mmd command line style, etc.

    So, I guess I'm just trying to find something that renders MultiMarkdown well, with the addition that a nice editor would be, well, nice.

  3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Fletcher on 25 Feb, 2014 09:07 PM

    Fletcher's Avatar

    On 2/25/14, 3:56 PM, flip wrote:
    > Yep, as a user of editors / markup languages dating back to teco / roff,
    > I’m pretty clear on the difference between word processors and text editors.

    Just checking. I get all types. ;)

    > I use Sublime (sometimes Emacs) to edit 75% of my markdown. I suppose
    > that, while I like the setup of Composer, I find that using a stylesheet
    > to change the text editing portion of the program a bit befuddling. I
    > want to edit using a monospace, 16pt typeface, yet, when I change that
    > (Yes I see the great big “this stuff may not do anything” warning) it
    > does nothing in my current configuration. (well, the typeface changes,
    > not the size, but the typeface, yes). I’m presuming this is because both
    > the text-editing pane -and- the output depend on CSS sorts of things. Of
    > course the CSS idea is -great- for output, I have a few styles I use
    > regularly, as you mention, but on the editor side I find the idea a
    > little less exciting I suppose.

    CSS affects the preview, not the editor.

    If the font size in the editor is not changing, then there are two
    possibilities:

    1. Is autozoom turned on? It adjusts the zoom to fit a specific line
    width. So increasing the font size would decrease the zoom
    proportionally, resulting in no net visual change (though printing would
    look different).

    2. If autozoom is not turned on, then your style sheet is overriding the
    font size (for example, the "Default" theme specifies a font size so
    that it can specify a relative font size for monospaced sections.) You
    can delete the "defaultFontSize" line, and adjust the font size to your
    heart's content. The "Plain" theme, for example, does not do this --
    it's intentionally very, well, *plain* so that it doesn't override very
    many other settings.

    > As for what I mean by a viewer-
    >
    > Right now I have a few scripts that grind my multimarkdown into whatever
    > it needs to be, but while I’m editing I tend to use Marked as a
    > ‘viewer/renderer’ of the MMD I am writing in Sublime. Sadly, Marked
    > doesn’t really work for everything I’d like (e.g. output) since it has a
    > very web-centric (not document-centric) idea of what the output of MMD
    > should be (eg- pagination is a bit of an issue, can’t dump to LaTeX if
    > I’d like, etc etc). So, I have to manually grind things through mmd
    > command line style, etc.
    >
    > So, I guess I'm just trying to find something that renders MultiMarkdown
    > well, with the addition that a nice editor would be, well, nice.
    >

    Composer's viewer is also somewhat "web-centric" unfortunately, since it
    uses a Web view. It doesn't directly offer pagination, but with proper
    CSS the "Print Preview" will (use the eBook style sheet for an example.)
      Composer does, obviously, offer easy export to LaTeX and the other
    file formats (the usual caveats about Word and RTF still apply).

    Hope this helps,

    F-

  4. Fletcher closed this discussion on 01 Mar, 2014 06:41 PM.

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