Forums General Discussion Font sizes

mIRC seems to be inconsistent within itself as to the size of fonts it displays. It is true that other programs don't seem to agree on what a given font size means, but in mIRC, characters within a single line can even appear at different sizes. I guess i can't say for certain how long it has been this way, as only recently have i noticed this. I'm on 7.19.

I have chosen a font size of 10 in mIRC. mIRC displays most characters at what my browsers would consider to be 13. Wordpad considers it to be 10. However, certain characters, such as 'ಠ', are displayed at the same size the browser would display them at if set to 10, which ends up being quite small compared to the rest of the text in mIRC. I wonder why the numbers don't match, and especially why the font sizes don't behave the same as in Chrome, Firefox, and Wordpad.

My explanation is probably poor, but these three images should adequately demonstrate the differences. Again, note that the font size in mIRC and Wordpad are both 10. My chosen font is Lucida Console.

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k191/Corrodias/Screenshot-2011-10-14_010427.png
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k191/Corrodias/Screenshot-2011-10-14_010309.png
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k191/Corrodias/Screenshot-2011-10-14_015956.png

mIRC uses font linking, which is probably what you are noticing with different sizes on the same line. If you use a font that does not support a given character, then mIRC will find a font on your system that does support it and display the character using that font. mIRC attempts to keep the character size close when doing this, but fonts don't all have the same sizes and sometimes you run into a situation where something like size 10 is too small and size 11 is too big because the font doesn't have a size that matches the original font. If you use a unicode font, you will not notice this very often (if at all) because the font should support all characters you are using. There may even be a new Lucida font that includes unicode characters. Looking at Lucida Console in charmap shows that it does not include the character ಠ, so this is most likely the problem you are facing.

Note that I don't know too much about font linking in terms of font sizes, so I may be incorrect in what is above, but I am pretty certain it is accurate.

As far as i'm aware, the browsers and Wordpad also use Windows's font lining system, as described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb688134

But as you can see from the screenshots, the other programs render that glyph the same size as the others. Lucida Console indeed does not support that character, which appears the same size as the rest of the text if you use Arial Unicode MS or Verdana. I believe the glyph actually comes from Arial Unicode MS on my system. Therefore, if i switch the font in mIRC to Arial Unicode MS, that glyph appears larger, the size i would expect it to appear.

In any case, i think it'd be nice for mIRC to have it fit the rest of the text, much like Wordpad and the browsers do it. I can only assume this odd sizing is a side effect of the way mIRC renders characters, which is to say it probably doesn't use typical Windows text controls. I know kvirc tries to draw things on the screen manually.

Afaik, mIRC uses its own font linking. Btw, having additional unicode fonts on your system helps to prevent this situation as mIRC's able to find a closer match to your original font.

In any case, there is room for improvement in font sizes in certain situations like yours.