Editor "zoom" (view scaling without changing document font size)

[20goto10]

I've been searching for a way to scale the view window for the editor without affecting the output of the manuscript. If the option is there in the settings, I can't find it. I have gotten by by adjusting the editor font size instead, but whenever I render the manuscript I wind up having to shift everything down from 19 point to standard 12 point text. This problem may only be apparent on ultra high def laptop screens.

How difficult is it to add a "zoom" option like this, along the lines of what exists in Word/LibreOffice/etc? I'd rather avoid having to mess with external settings, i.e. display, scaling my window manager, etc..

[vkbo]

Hmm, it should auto-scale for high DPI. Can you provide a screenshot? This may be a bug.

I have considered adding a zoom feature, but I haven't investigated it yet.

[20goto10]

Hmm, it should auto-scale for high DPI. Can you provide a screenshot? This may be a bug.

I have considered adding a zoom feature, but I haven't investigated it yet.

Here's how it looks for me in the basic mode and focus mode. Font size is 12 point here. The screen is 14", so, pretty tricky to use on the default. I think automatically scaling the view to the screen size is not ideal as it does not take personal reading preferences into account (not to mention more specific accessibility issues).

I have seen an issue where the font sizes and line spaces all shrink after my screen saver activates, but for some reason I assumed that was something to do with my window manager and not NovelWriter itself. (I'm using Mint Linux 21 w/Cinnamon, which has a few issues of its own.) That's fixed by restarting NovelWriter. Maybe it is a function of the automatic scaling... if so, it's going in the wrong direction. I see it as a separate issue from the matter of zoom.

[20goto10]

(I should also note, system font size is 12 and there is no WM font scaling in effect.)

[vkbo]

Here's how it looks for me in the basic mode and focus mode. Font size is 12 point here. The screen is 14", so, pretty tricky to use on the default. I think automatically scaling the view to the screen size is not ideal as it does not take personal reading preferences into account (not to mention more specific accessibility issues).

The auto-scaling is not to screen size, but to the GUI scaling factor. If you have it set to 100% (1.0), then there is no scaling. The font is scaled automatically by the Qt framework anyway. All I do is scale boxes and icons to match. I thought that might be the issue since you mentioned "ultra high def laptop screens".

I don't think that's the issue here.

I have seen an issue where the font sizes and line spaces all shrink after my screen saver activates, but for some reason I assumed that was something to do with my window manager and not NovelWriter itself. (I'm using Mint Linux 21 w/Cinnamon, which has a few issues of its own.) That's fixed by restarting NovelWriter. Maybe it is a function of the automatic scaling... if so, it's going in the wrong direction. I see it as a separate issue from the matter of zoom.

The auto-scaling is not dynamic, so if there is something glitchy it is likely an issue between the Qt framework and the window manager. Qt5 has a few issues in this respect, and there isn't really anything I can do about it. Either they fix it in patch releases, or hopefully I can add support for Qt6 eventually. That should help with a bunch of little issues with modern window managers and High-DPI monitors.

In any case, I still don't quite understand what the issue is with font size. The GUI font size, editor font size, and the font size output by the Build tool to manuscript documents are all independent settings, and you should be able to tweak each as you want.

Unrelated, but I also see that you are running a light theme icons on a dark GUI theme, which makes the icons hard to see. Especially the black on grey ones. You should switch to the dark icon theme. This also seems to be an older version of novelWriter.

[vkbo]

As for the zoom feature, the Qt framework does have a text zoom feature for the editor (it is literally 6 lines of code to enable), but unfortunately the implementation isn't very useful. Zooming just changes the base text size, so the headers don't scale. It can theoretically be fixed by setting relative sizes for the headers, but that too is rather limited as you can't set numeric relative sizes. It's one of the problems I've tried to solve since I first started this project.

[20goto10]

Fair enough. I see what you mean about Qt problems and I understand the reasons for not having a zoom feature now. I completely overlooked the font size setting in the export screen--except once, I guess, because at some point I must have set it to 19 point (oops). Cinnamon/Gnome stuff has a separate Qt settings editor which made some of the smaller Qt-controlled content a little easier to read, too. So I have everything in good shape now (and I've now updated to 2.0). It seems I can live without zoom.

Thanks for the guidance and your work on this excellent project. I've been recommending it to many writers.

[vkbo]

I added those separate settings as a way to compensate for the lack of zoom, at least in the context of usability. There are still cases where the lack of zoom is an issue, so I would like to fix it. I just don't have a solution right now that doesn't come with other issues. I would like to look for a workable solution though, so let's leave this issue open for now.

Thanks a lot for your feedback! I'm happy that novelWriter works for you aside from this. It's nice to see that it is useful to other people. I originally made it for myself and a colleague, and it has grown to quite a large project.