Is there a way to make the entries in the search fields appear larger?
 

I have a hard time using the search and replace box in Sigil because the text entries appear so small I can barely read them. Is there any way to make the text appear larger? I don't mind if I have to customize a part of the app to do this; it would be worth it for me. As I get older, it is harder and harder to read small type. This is especially precarious working with regex which is hard enough as is. A typo in there makes any operation risky if I can't catch them in time.

I realize the size of the type on the screen can depend on the particular screen resolution and OS system. I am using Windows 10 on a laptop with a 12.5" screen and resolution of 1920 x 1080. I believe this is considered average by today's standards.

Can anything be done?

--Pat

Have you tried the built-in Accessibility features of your OS?

You mean the magnifier in Windows 10 which makes everything on the screen and every program immensely huge and difficult to navigate? No.

Most every program I use on Windows 10 and on this laptop is fine -- and even other parts of Sigil are fine. The only other program I have issues with in terms of small type which is hard to read is Photoshop CS6, but then I use a manifest workaround which has fixed that issue.

Is there no other way to make just the entry fields larger for search & replace? Such as some file whose values I could edit?

--Pat

I just checked the source. There are no hard font sizes set in Sigil source for any dialog or even the main app. All Sigil font sizes are inherited from your OS system or from Qt itself. Please go through your OS appearance (Control Panel) settings and make sure the minimum font size is set according to your needs.

I am not a Windows user so I can't help much but I did a quick Google search and found this link which leads you hrough changing minimum font sizes for your OS.

http://www.windowscentral.com/how-ma...ger-windows-10

Not sure if that is the best link or not but hopefully something there will help.

On my system(s), the S&R text entries appear to be the same size as the file names in the Book Browser, and the entries in the Table of Contents widget (as well as the tab label). Are you not experiencing something similar? Or are those texts also too small?

And unfortunately, no. There's no file to be edited to override the font sizes in Sigil's UI (besides the Book View/Preview, and Code View fonts/sizes). Qt uses System fonts/themes to decide on everything else. Not sure of an easy way we could provide this sort of specific customization to a user of Sigil, to be honest. We could probably hardcode bigger font-sizes in Sigil's source, but that would likely be unsatisfactory to others.

If you can’t read something on your screen
because of the size of the font, or you can’t see a detail in
an image, you just need to hold control, and roll the mid-
dle mouse wheel. Rolling it away from you will increase
the size, and rolling it towards you will take it back to the
original.

Zooming won't work on the user interface fonts (menus, buttons, textboxes, widgets). It will only work on an open document's fonts (Book View/Preview/Codeview).

If they are the same size, it must be a coincidence. Windows 10 gives users only very limited options to adjust text sizes independent of display scaling, and I tested them all today. None of them worked to change the size of the S&R entries. Interestingly, I discovered if you adjust the size of “Icons” then the sizes in both the Book Browser and Table of Contents panes will also change! Go figure.

While this is good to know, I did not have much of an issue with the text sizes in those two panes, in part because editing those items does not demand as much precision and accuracy as does doing regex S&R activities on multiple html files. You can always go back and correct something in the Book Browser and TOC panes, but undoing some massive S&R actions is more difficult. Also, if I ever have a lot of TOC editing to do, I can always fall back on Calibre’s TOC editor, which is easy to use and has larger type.

What I’ve ended up doing now is just raise the display scaling slightly higher, but only by a little bit. I can’t do it too much as then it distorts everything else. This really doesn’t fix the issue. The Windows font adjustment for whatever is controlling the S&R field is apparently hidden. Or it’s available only from the system registry. If anyone ever discovers where it is or how to access it, please let me know. I’m comfortable with doing small and limited changes to the system registry.

By the way, I’ve noticed that you and KevinH now work on Sigil. Thanks to both of you and anyone else who is involved for keeping it updated and improving it. When I last updated in March, I noticed how much faster epubs opened up in it. It sometimes used to take up to a minute or more to open some epubs. Now everything seems to open up in a fraction of that time. It’s like night and day. Great work!

--Pat

It appears there are things called Qt StyleSheets that can be used to allow a user to override styles used for specific Widgets (such as QLineEdit widgets used in Find and Replace) which can include setting font sizes for some widgets.

I have never played with them but when I get a chance, I will try to find a tutorial via google about how users can set up and use their own Qt stylesheets passed into the app via the -style commandline option.

If this works, it may be help.

@KevinH, I hope you do find a workaround. I was thinking about this last week, and glad to see someone brought up the subject.

My personal problem is not the S&R window, but the Spell Check dialog. (20" monitor, 1680x1050, Windows 8.1). I have adjusted scaling in the Personalization area, but as PatNY notes, you can end with text too large to fit in other areas of interface.

Thanks. I am very much interested in such a workaround.

@GrannyGrump ... it's good to see I wasn't the only one having a hard time using some parts of the interface. As high-res displays become more and more common, issues like this may crop up more -- especially on Windows platforms. I don't think Windows has dealt with display scaling in the best possible ways. Hopefully they will continue to improve in the future and perhaps this will no longer be such an issue as time goes on.

Just to let you know that many people are probably in the same situation. I too have the same problem and have posted about GUI text being unadjustable and too small to read comfortably. The accessability options in Windows 7 and above are not ideal for people like myself who just need certain text a little larger.

I use a third party "loup" magnifier which has similarities to the Win 10 magnifier.

This really must be a Windows issue. I have a 27" iMac with Retina display(2560x1440) and bifocals and can easily see all fields in Sigil. So somehow, Windows has messed up the point to dpi resolution calculation (or possibly Qt on Windows has this bug?).

Kevin
It can be more than just size.
'Blue(ish)' is becoming a contrast problem for me, Not size. (I was not color blind when I was younger. I am not sure I would pass some of the 'what number tests' today)

When we age, eyes change... :(
I used to wear glasses all the time (near sighted).
Then it was Bi-focals
Now, only for far stuff BUT I need way more LIGHT

I tried Windows Ease of Access settings. The HUGE (UGLY) issue is they are total overrides