Forums Feature Suggestions Change the detault font

Im glad to see that the icons in mirc were modernised in 6.31. How about taking that modernisation further and change the default font. Fixedsys is pretty ugly so changing it to a sans serif font would make it look a lot better.

Someone else (me) might argue the opposite.

you can set the default yourself..

as you can see the font name is "Fixed System" for a reason

Yes I do know you can set it yourself, but it would just be nice to have a nicer looking font by default.

Why do you think its called that for a reason then?

mIRC's default font is not a priority to whine about. FixedSys is a fine font, it has been the default one for years. Need a different font? /font is your friend

Not sure "whine" is really the right word. This is Feature Suggestions, and the OP is suggesting a feature. There are a number of issues with Fixedsys, some smaller ones that have been around for as long as it has been the default font, and a fairly major issue that has only become relevant in recent releases:

• One of the main 'features' of Fixedsys it that it's supposed to be fixed width. Except it isn't a true fixed-width font. Bold characters are wider than regular weighted characters.
  
  
• It's a bitmap font. That means it's only designed to be viewed at a single fixed size and its ability to scale is severely limited. Whether you like the look of it at that size is subjective, but I don't think many could argue that it isn't ugly at different sizes. It's certainly not ideal for users who want/require the font to be a different size (eg. visually impaired users)
  
  
• It doesn't support Unicode. It never will support Unicode as it is a bitmap font. That's a pretty big flaw in the default font for an IRC client, especially if mIRC is (hopefully) going to progress in the next couple of years towards displaying and encoding in UTF-8 by default.

The first two points are pretty minor, the last one is not. Of course all of these issues can be fixed by changing the font after installing, but the goal should always be to make mIRC as useable and accessible as possible right out of the box.

I agree - fixedsys is ancient and as Starbucks said, has issues.

While we're on the subject of fonts I think it would be a good idea to use consolas as the default script editor font on vista rather than courier new.

Although the cons of Fixedsys isn't a good enough reason to change the default, the OOB point was a good one. It probably should be changed.

I looked at Consolas after your post, and... ugh. I think I could accept it alright if it wasn't for the slanted $'s. Those look awful, imo.

Personally, I don't care what the defaults are for either as they are easily changed to fit each person's preference. That said, I do think we should consider making the default fonts ones that *can* display unicode characters. I'd still suggest sticking to a fixed width font (if there are any that display unicode characters that are installed by default in Windows). In either case, the font should be one that is installed by default in at least versions of Windows released after Win98 (perhaps even including Win98) considering mIRC's supposed to work for more than just new versions of Windows. The alternative, of course, is for mIRC to install a font (or fonts) when being installed. That would also be okay with me.

verdana, tahoma, calibri/segoe(vista fonts), times/times new roman, arial, and lucidia are good fonts too

i dont really like fixedsys, but idc

I am convinced

whatever font is chosen it would have to be monospaced or many people would be pretty disappointed. A lot of the IRC world still depends on fixed-width fonts. That rules out pretty much everything but fixedsys, terminal and the courier family as far are standard Windows fonts go. Verdana, tahoma or any vista sans-serif would just not do.

Calling fixedsys ugly is a very subjective claim and is why /font exists. In the end, it doesn't matter what the default font is if you can change it-- Khaled should feel free to choose whatever he likes best, though it should remain respectful of the IRC community in general, and that is: monospaced / fixed-width. I've only seen one IRC client that was packaged with a non-fixed-width font as default and I immediately deleted it (partly because of that reason)- that's probably indicative of something, if I count as a statistical norm.