The best font and weight for XP

[Andy]

Hi,

My project in win 7 & vista looks great, but not so sharp and clear in XP.

From experience, can anyone suggest the best font type and weight.

For XP I found "Microsoft Sans Serif" and weight 700 or 701 to be better but wonder does anyone have something that might be clearer.

My dialog text is in white i.e. rgb(255,255,255)
and my screen backgrounds are blue i.e. rgb(43,85,142)

Thanks,
Andy.

[LarryMc]

I personally like Tahoma.

[Brian]

I like Tahoma myself, but to make sure the font is on any flavour of OS, I use Arial

Brian

[Andy]

Thanks Brian,

Hope you are well, Arial didn't seem to come out too good for me.

But thanks,

stay in touch,
Andy.

PS, thanks to Larry as well.

[Andy]

Sorry, I should have asked this question as well:

How can you change the font / size of a menu item? I found this on the MSDN site

PopupMenu MENU
BEGIN
  POPUP "Dummy Popup"
    BEGIN
      POPUP "Fonts"
        BEGIN
          MENUITEM "Courier",     IDM_FONT_COURIER
          MENUITEM "Times Roman", IDM_FONT_TMSRMN
          MENUITEM "Swiss",       IDM_FONT_SWISS
          MENUITEM "Helvetica",   IDM_FONT_HELV
          MENUITEM "Old English", IDM_FONT_OLDENG
        END
      POPUP "Sizes"
        BEGIN
          MENUITEM "7",  IDM_SIZE_7
          MENUITEM "8",  IDM_SIZE_8
          MENUITEM "9",  IDM_SIZE_9
          MENUITEM "10", IDM_SIZE_10
          MENUITEM "11", IDM_SIZE_11
          MENUITEM "12", IDM_SIZE_12
          MENUITEM "14", IDM_SIZE_14
        END
      POPUP "Styles"
        BEGIN
          MENUITEM "Bold",        IDM_STYLE_BOLD
          MENUITEM "Italic",      IDM_STYLE_ITALIC
          MENUITEM "Strike Out",  IDM_STYLE_SO
          MENUITEM "Superscript", IDM_STYLE_SUPER
          MENUITEM "Subscript",   IDM_STYLE_SUB
        END
    END

END

Should I be setting a CONST for these items and if so would it look something like this:

CONST IDM_FONT_COURIER =

MENUITEM "Add to Favorites",0,1021 | IDM_FONT_COURIER

Hope i'm on the right track?

Thanks,
Andy.

[LarryMc]

Sorry, but you are reading that code all wrong.
The code is for a menu that is use to change font parameters and NOT the font of the menu itself.
These type of constants (IDM_FONT_COURIER ) all start with a defacto standard string for ID Message

In the message handler for the window/dialog that would contain your posted code there would be something that looked like this.

Code Select Expand

SUB main(),INT
SELECT @MESSAGE
   CASE @IDCLOSEWINDOW
       REM closes the window and sets w1 = 0
       CLOSEWINDOW w1
   CASE @IDMENUPICK
       SELECT @MENUNUM
           CASE IDM_FONT_COURIER
               'user code to setfont of window or whatever
           CASE IDM_FONT_TMSRMN
               'user code to setfont of window or whatever
           CASE IDM_SIZE_7
               'user code to setfont of window or whatever
'etc.
       ENDSELECT
ENDSELECT
RETURN
ENDSUB

and as for the constants

Code Select Expand

CONST IDM_FONT_COURIER = 1234   'any number you want as long as it is unique to the window/dialog that the menu is in.

I'll have to look to see what I can find on changing the font of the menu text itself

I'll get back to you.

[LarryMc]

The attached is a modified version of Sapero's Aurora OfficeMenu class that was adapted for EB.

I was able to modify it to change the font name and to add italics.
I didn't play with it long enough to figure out how to change the font size.

See if you can figure it out if that is what you are wanting.

[Logman]

I personally like Calibri font for displaying on the screen. I'm typing in Calibri right now.

When I print out documents from my programs, Verdana or Helvetica are a good selections as can be seen in this paragraph. They are very clear and most programs and printers support one or both, or some similar version of either font.

Of course, when I code I use Consolas as I'm showing now. It is a mono-spaced font and displays zeros with slashes so you can tell 0s from the letter O. Here's a sample of Consolas code:

$INCLUDE "windowssdk.inc"
DIM myInteger AS INT = 1000

OPENCONSOLE
FOR i = 0 to 100
   PRINT "This is a number: ", myInteger    REM Consolas helps line up text and looks better than New Times Roman
   myInteger = myInteger + 1                REM These comments line up quite nicely
NEXT i
PRINT "Press any key to quit..."

DO:UNTIL INKEY$ <> ""

CLOSECONSOLE
END

Of course, I'm not sure Consolas is available on OS's before Windows 7, but when you are writing code and converting it to PDF or Windows Help format, it really looks good in print.

LOGMAN

[billhsln]

I use Andale Mono TTF for a fixed format font.  Is available online free.

This is a test of sample of 'Andale Mono' (0) zero.

Bill

[Bruce Peaslee]

I like Segoe UI on my main window.

[Andy]

Thanks everyone!

I will check out these fonts to see which I think looks good for my project in XP.

Larry, thanks as always for taking the time to look into the font question for menu items, it seems more complicated than first thought! - will look into the code you posted.

Once again, thanks everyone,


Andy.