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It seems that --fontsize value for netbeans on Mac is 12. When I run NetBeans.app, the ide starts with fonts that are much bigger than any other Mac application. I suggest setting --fontsize to 10 by default in Mac builds.
Actually it seems that --fontsize 11 is the closest to the the rest of the MacOS environment
Milos can you pass to abybody who can take care of default Mac setting? Thanks.
Yes, it looks like the font is bigger. Tim, do you have an idea why it's bigger?
In 3.6 we used the same small font sizes that we use on Windows, etc. People complained that (bug report somewhere) this was not the native font sizes in the UI for other Mac OS applications. So for 4.0 I took out the code that set the font sizes - so it will just get whatever Swing on Mac OS uses. :-) I agree they're big - I personally would prefer smaller; on the other hand, they're consistent with the rest of the desktop. It is worth noting that other IDE's, IIRC even Apple's, use smaller fonts than the standard big Mac OS desktop font. So it might not be unreasonable to set the fonts smaller. IDEs are pretty demanding of screen real-estate. I don't think anything we do will make everyone happy :-/
Now, if they're, as suggested, *not* consistent with the desktop, then something is wrong (last I knew no font size setting code should be running during startup on Mac OS). igorminar: When you say the --fontsize setting is set to 12, do you mean you've found someplace where it is explicitly being set, or just that the fonts you see are 12 point? I haven't maintained this code in a while, but it *should* just pick up whatever font is provided by UIManager.get ("controlFont") for most of the UI. Also, 12 point being bigger than the rest of applications on the desktop doesn't entirely make sense to me - 12 point is pretty small, and historically Mac OS uses 13 or 14 point fonts on the desktop. AFAIK there is no way to globally set the ui font size for the entire OS in Mac OS - I've tried to find something like that quite a bit for a family member with eyesight problems.
When I said that the defaul setting is --fontsize 12, I meant that if I run netbeans with or without fontsize set to 12 it looks the same. I've just took some screenshots with different fontsizes and compared them and I see that I was wrong and that the default setting is --fontsize 13 I agree with the opinion that IDEs are screen space demanding and since most of the apps for Mac use smaller font size than 13 anyway I don't think that font size consistency is an issue here. I'll attach the screenshots I took.
Created attachment 35301 [details] default fontsize
Created attachment 35302 [details] --fontsize 13
Created attachment 35303 [details] --fontsize 12
Created attachment 35304 [details] --fontsize 11
Created attachment 35305 [details] --fontsize 10
Interesting. It looks like the NB-default.png screen shot might be one point size larger than the font shown in the Finder window. The font NetBeans is, for better or worse, supposed to be picking up from Apple's Swing impl is the same font used in Finder in Mac OS. iTunes and some other apps on Mac OS do use a smaller font, so I think there is a reasonable precedent for reducing font size on Mac OS. I know I'd prefer it smaller - the only question is whether that will make a bunch of other people scream that it looks non-native.
if we use the default fonts that apple's jdk considers correct, then we should keep it that way. please file a bug in apple's bug tracking system if you think the default font should be changed.