Sage 7 UI - for improved readability

[stevech]

Evaluating whether to switch to Sage 7

To help a user with declining eyesight... I need to do the following (not an option in the config menus I could find)

Change fonts to BOLD FACE
Change font and backgrounds, in guide and more so, list of recordings, from the default light grey on dark grey background. Ideally, black font on beige or other somewhat light background, but not full white.

In many places the Minimum Font Size setting from SETUP is ignored, e.g., in most menu's deselected menu items - some but not all.

In the photo browser UI, with large fonts, only one word appears for the folder names. Better would be fewer folders per row so there can be more words displayed. As it is now, it's not very usable with large fonts. Better yet- get rid of the folder icons - just show text menu picks for folder names. The icon is not meaningful.

Perhaps some of these tweaks can be done in the properties file. But with Sage 6, the symbols names/purposes wasn't documented that I could find. No crib sheet.

[Fuzzy]

Most of this could be done with a custom theme. for info on creating themes, refer to Appendix O in the sagetv manual.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Most of this could be done with a custom theme. for info on creating themes, refer to Appendix O in the sagetv manual.

I spent an hour studying what's written about creating a new style.
I copied the standard folder to a new one for my custom.
I edited the properties, changed the Description, changed some fonts, etc.

So far, I cannot get the new theme folder to appear in the setup screen- only "standard" appears.

I must say, the properties file has a lot of controls. But what's missing is an explanation of what style property affects what. There is a terse attempt to say so, like "main menu1, main menu 2" and so on. And "buttons". But relating this to what I see on screen is not possible.

Also, for example: in the recordings display, suppose I want to change the right-half of the screen to be absent or smaller or some such so that the menu list of recordings has more than half of the screen (gee). How can this be done by editing the style?

I see only one font family- a folder in Sage with TTFs. I wonder if I can and how to choose a font in Windows 7?

[ranger]

Try out the Diamond UI. It uses different fonts that might be more readable for you.

[stevech]

I'll search in the forums for that UI.
I do have my theme working now.
Main problem:
I set min font size to 20. Using 22 caused the Recordings display to be unreadable due to overlapping text.

But the EPG - text is a small percentage of the button-box size, is not large font, is not white, etc. I have yet to find property settings to overcome these.
In Sage V6, I had finally gotten the EPG font large and contrasty by trial and error in the properties.

The teeny font in the EPG is also apparent in this demo of the Diamond UI - the font needs to fill out the containing box/button to be visible across the room by people with imperfect sight.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8067076/Diam...6_4_large.html

[jorton]

Originally Posted by stevech

I'll search in the forums for that UI.
I do have my theme working now.
Main problem:
I set min font size to 20. Using 22 caused the Recordings display to be unreadable due to overlapping text.

But the EPG - text is a small percentage of the button-box size, is not large font, is not white, etc. I have yet to find property settings to overcome these.
In Sage V6, I had finally gotten the EPG font large and contrasty by trial and error in the properties.

The teeny font in the EPG is also apparent in this demo of the Diamond UI - the font needs to fill out the containing box/button to be visible across the room by people with imperfect sight.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8067076/Diam...6_4_large.html

The EPG has a fair number of settings if you hit ESC and then go to menu options. You can make the fonts in the grid pretty large, see attached.

Jeremy

(Click image for larger version)

[stevech]

Jeremy: Thanks! It didn't occur to me to hit ESC to change the fonts, since that's done in the SETUP menu.

Next: In the TV submenu where the fourth item is Recording Schedule, this and ones below it don't adopt the large font size I configured. The first 3 items do. Anything I can do about that?

[Fuzzy]

File a bug report so they can be fixed.

[jorton]

Originally Posted by stevech

Next: In the TV submenu where the fourth item is Recording Schedule, this and ones below it don't adopt the large font size I configured. The first 3 items do. Anything I can do about that?

The fonts will scale, the problem is that the text is longer for some of the items and they will only scale so much before you run out of room horizontally.

About the only thing you could do is shorten the names of those items to allow them to scale more vertically. You would have to do this in studio.

A few people complained the Diamond menu font was too big when we released it, you must be going for the gusto ;o)

Jeremy

[stevech]

Originally Posted by jorton

The fonts will scale, the problem is that the text is longer for some of the items and they will only scale so much before you run out of room horizontally.

About the only thing you could do is shorten the names of those items to allow them to scale more vertically. You would have to do this in studio.
Jeremy

Not I! I looked into that and decided that all my day job brain cells would be deprived if I went into Studio.