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[archive] Entry Field Minimum Size

  • September 10, 2009
  • 4 replies
  • 0 views
D

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 10 September 2009]

When setting the FONT on an entry field to a proportional font, and specifying a size of 1, the entry field is much too big.

We are changing all of our screens over to proportional fonts, to address the comments about things looking "dated" or "DOS-ish". The biggest problem we have come across is that the smallest size an entry-field will show up is almost 3 characters in length. The reason for this, I suspect, is due to the fact that entry fields have a minimum size based on the largest character in the font specified. Since all of the fonts we can safely use have multiple character sets, they include characters which are much bigger than the "W" which we would consider the largest character that would ever show up in there. The problem stems from the use of single or double character entry fields (for Yes/No, Male/Female, state abbreviations, etc). If the entry field is 3 characters wide, people sometimes find it confusing, and it looks odd to boot.

I have tried setting the character set when I create the fonts, in an attempt to narrow down the characters used to measure the font, but it seems to make no difference. I have also tried many different proportional fonts, and the results are basically the same, no matter which font I've tried. The only solution seems to be using a "fixed" font, but that's eactly what we're getting away from for the aforementioned reasons. I submitted an issue to Acucorp support (including sample code), and 3 hours later received a canned response explaining that getting exact sizes on entry fields is difficult, and suggested I try a fixed font. I'm pretty sure they didn't actually read any of the description I typed in, or looked at the sample code at all, and now when I call back they're "unavailable".

If anyone has any ideas that might help I would greatly appreactiate it.

Thanks,
-Chris

    4 replies

    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 10 September 2009]

    When setting the FONT on an entry field to a proportional font, and specifying a size of 1, the entry field is much too big.

    We are changing all of our screens over to proportional fonts, to address the comments about things looking "dated" or "DOS-ish". The biggest problem we have come across is that the smallest size an entry-field will show up is almost 3 characters in length. The reason for this, I suspect, is due to the fact that entry fields have a minimum size based on the largest character in the font specified. Since all of the fonts we can safely use have multiple character sets, they include characters which are much bigger than the "W" which we would consider the largest character that would ever show up in there. The problem stems from the use of single or double character entry fields (for Yes/No, Male/Female, state abbreviations, etc). If the entry field is 3 characters wide, people sometimes find it confusing, and it looks odd to boot.

    I have tried setting the character set when I create the fonts, in an attempt to narrow down the characters used to measure the font, but it seems to make no difference. I have also tried many different proportional fonts, and the results are basically the same, no matter which font I've tried. The only solution seems to be using a "fixed" font, but that's eactly what we're getting away from for the aforementioned reasons. I submitted an issue to Acucorp support (including sample code), and 3 hours later received a canned response explaining that getting exact sizes on entry fields is difficult, and suggested I try a fixed font. I'm pretty sure they didn't actually read any of the description I typed in, or looked at the sample code at all, and now when I call back they're "unavailable".

    If anyone has any ideas that might help I would greatly appreactiate it.

    Thanks,
    -Chris
    Chris,

    What I've done in this case is to set the fields that support 1 or 2 characters to the same size of 3. Then I set the max text value to either 1 or 2 to limit them to the number of characters that they can key in. I know this doesn't answer your question directly, but that's how I've addressed the DOS-ish look complaint.
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 10 September 2009]

    When setting the FONT on an entry field to a proportional font, and specifying a size of 1, the entry field is much too big.

    We are changing all of our screens over to proportional fonts, to address the comments about things looking "dated" or "DOS-ish". The biggest problem we have come across is that the smallest size an entry-field will show up is almost 3 characters in length. The reason for this, I suspect, is due to the fact that entry fields have a minimum size based on the largest character in the font specified. Since all of the fonts we can safely use have multiple character sets, they include characters which are much bigger than the "W" which we would consider the largest character that would ever show up in there. The problem stems from the use of single or double character entry fields (for Yes/No, Male/Female, state abbreviations, etc). If the entry field is 3 characters wide, people sometimes find it confusing, and it looks odd to boot.

    I have tried setting the character set when I create the fonts, in an attempt to narrow down the characters used to measure the font, but it seems to make no difference. I have also tried many different proportional fonts, and the results are basically the same, no matter which font I've tried. The only solution seems to be using a "fixed" font, but that's eactly what we're getting away from for the aforementioned reasons. I submitted an issue to Acucorp support (including sample code), and 3 hours later received a canned response explaining that getting exact sizes on entry fields is difficult, and suggested I try a fixed font. I'm pretty sure they didn't actually read any of the description I typed in, or looked at the sample code at all, and now when I call back they're "unavailable".

    If anyone has any ideas that might help I would greatly appreactiate it.

    Thanks,
    -Chris
    The solution is to use cells to size the control rather than the font measure which is the default. To do that specify CELLS as the units for your control size like this:

    [INDENT] 03 ENTRY-FIELD
    [INDENT] LINE 2
    COL 2
    SIZE 1.4 CELLS
    FONT MY-FONT
    VALUE EF-CONTENTS[/INDENT]
    [/INDENT]
    And define the cell width and cell height in the DISPLAY statement like this:

    [INDENT] DISPLAY STANDARD GRAPHICAL WINDOW
    [INDENT] BACKGROUND-LOW
    SCREEN LINE 10
    SCREEN COL 10
    LINES 9
    SIZE 35
    CELL WIDTH 10
    CELL HEIGHT 10[/INDENT][/INDENT]

    This will allow you to size the controls exactly.

    You may also want to add the 3-D style to the entry field to make is look less DOS-ish. Do that simply by adding "3-D" to the list of properties in the screen section definition of the control.
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 10 September 2009]

    When setting the FONT on an entry field to a proportional font, and specifying a size of 1, the entry field is much too big.

    We are changing all of our screens over to proportional fonts, to address the comments about things looking "dated" or "DOS-ish". The biggest problem we have come across is that the smallest size an entry-field will show up is almost 3 characters in length. The reason for this, I suspect, is due to the fact that entry fields have a minimum size based on the largest character in the font specified. Since all of the fonts we can safely use have multiple character sets, they include characters which are much bigger than the "W" which we would consider the largest character that would ever show up in there. The problem stems from the use of single or double character entry fields (for Yes/No, Male/Female, state abbreviations, etc). If the entry field is 3 characters wide, people sometimes find it confusing, and it looks odd to boot.

    I have tried setting the character set when I create the fonts, in an attempt to narrow down the characters used to measure the font, but it seems to make no difference. I have also tried many different proportional fonts, and the results are basically the same, no matter which font I've tried. The only solution seems to be using a "fixed" font, but that's eactly what we're getting away from for the aforementioned reasons. I submitted an issue to Acucorp support (including sample code), and 3 hours later received a canned response explaining that getting exact sizes on entry fields is difficult, and suggested I try a fixed font. I'm pretty sure they didn't actually read any of the description I typed in, or looked at the sample code at all, and now when I call back they're "unavailable".

    If anyone has any ideas that might help I would greatly appreactiate it.

    Thanks,
    -Chris
    The solution is to use cells to size the control rather than the font measure which is the default. To do that specify CELLS as the units for your control size like this:

    [INDENT] 03 ENTRY-FIELD
    [INDENT] LINE 2
    COL 2
    SIZE 1.4 CELLS
    FONT MY-FONT
    VALUE EF-CONTENTS[/INDENT]
    [/INDENT]
    And define the cell width and cell height in the DISPLAY statement like this:

    [INDENT] DISPLAY STANDARD GRAPHICAL WINDOW
    [INDENT] BACKGROUND-LOW
    SCREEN LINE 10
    SCREEN COL 10
    LINES 9
    SIZE 35
    CELL WIDTH 10
    CELL HEIGHT 10[/INDENT][/INDENT]

    This will allow you to size the controls exactly.

    You may also want to add the 3-D style to the entry field to make is look less DOS-ish. Do that simply by adding "3-D" to the list of properties in the screen section definition of the control.
    D

    [Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 10 September 2009]

    When setting the FONT on an entry field to a proportional font, and specifying a size of 1, the entry field is much too big.

    We are changing all of our screens over to proportional fonts, to address the comments about things looking "dated" or "DOS-ish". The biggest problem we have come across is that the smallest size an entry-field will show up is almost 3 characters in length. The reason for this, I suspect, is due to the fact that entry fields have a minimum size based on the largest character in the font specified. Since all of the fonts we can safely use have multiple character sets, they include characters which are much bigger than the "W" which we would consider the largest character that would ever show up in there. The problem stems from the use of single or double character entry fields (for Yes/No, Male/Female, state abbreviations, etc). If the entry field is 3 characters wide, people sometimes find it confusing, and it looks odd to boot.

    I have tried setting the character set when I create the fonts, in an attempt to narrow down the characters used to measure the font, but it seems to make no difference. I have also tried many different proportional fonts, and the results are basically the same, no matter which font I've tried. The only solution seems to be using a "fixed" font, but that's eactly what we're getting away from for the aforementioned reasons. I submitted an issue to Acucorp support (including sample code), and 3 hours later received a canned response explaining that getting exact sizes on entry fields is difficult, and suggested I try a fixed font. I'm pretty sure they didn't actually read any of the description I typed in, or looked at the sample code at all, and now when I call back they're "unavailable".

    If anyone has any ideas that might help I would greatly appreactiate it.

    Thanks,
    -Chris
    The solution is to use cells to size the control rather than the font measure which is the default. To do that specify CELLS as the units for your control size like this:

    [INDENT] 03 ENTRY-FIELD
    [INDENT] LINE 2
    COL 2
    SIZE 1.4 CELLS
    FONT MY-FONT
    VALUE EF-CONTENTS[/INDENT]
    [/INDENT]
    And define the cell width and cell height in the DISPLAY statement like this:

    [INDENT] DISPLAY STANDARD GRAPHICAL WINDOW
    [INDENT] BACKGROUND-LOW
    SCREEN LINE 10
    SCREEN COL 10
    LINES 9
    SIZE 35
    CELL WIDTH 10
    CELL HEIGHT 10[/INDENT][/INDENT]

    This will allow you to size the controls exactly.

    You may also want to add the 3-D style to the entry field to make is look less DOS-ish. Do that simply by adding "3-D" to the list of properties in the screen section definition of the control.

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