Font too small in all dialog boxes

[scrathcyboy]

Open Office 3 Writer on the MAC !!

I cannot read any of the dialog boxes, even on the system Preferences list, the font size is so small that it is unreadable. PLEASE HELP!! Tell me where to go to change it. Since I cannot read any of the dialog boxes, you will have to give me an exact location where to go to. Else a picture will help. Everything is like microscopic glyph writing, keep that in mind when giving directions !! Thank you... MAC OSX 10.5.8 version should not matter.

[Hagar Delest]

Like that one? Tiny text

[scrathcyboy]

sorry, that doesn't help at all, since I don't know what you are referring to with "like that one?"
Can you not just point me to a setting to change it, or is it a flaw of OO on the MAC?

[thomasjk]

Did you click on the link and read the discussion?

[scrathcyboy]

Yes I did, bu no resolution. Besides that thread is 3 years old, and seems to come to NO conclusion. If a bug, surely they have fixed it by now.

[Hagar Delest]

Do you have an external monitor? There were several topics about issues when connecting another monitor.
Have you tried the scaling option?

Perhaps that you are facing a corner case like the other one and perhaps there is no solution. But if you don't tell if you've tried the different proposals given, what should we do?

[scrathcyboy]

No external monitor, and asking about the scaling option tells me nothing. I CANNOT READ ANYTHING IN ANY DIALOG BOX !!! Someone PLEASE give me a screen shot of what the VIEW dialog box looks like with readable fonts on a MACINTOSH. It won't help from a PC. MY OO menus on the PC are totally different than on the MAC. PLEASE a person running writer on a MAC, give me a screen shot of the VIEW dialog box !

[lgusaas]

Is this a new problem? Was OOo working before now? If so, resetting your user profile may correct the problem For instructions see: http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... 426#p58403

Here is the screenshot you asked for:

[scrathcyboy]

Thank you, lgusaas. Your menu was similar to mine, but not exactly the same. But we entered in the correct choices based on what you provided, and it did NOT make any difference. The Font size on all dialog boxes is still so small that it is unreadable. I remember, that when we first installed OO on this MAC, there was no problem, but at some point, everything got corrupted, and since then, nothing in the dialog boxes is readable. OF course, this does not affect the main menu title bar, or any of the text in the files -- just the dialog boxes, including the choice of font type and size just above the file contents display. So the program is choosing a font for these dialog displays that cannot be displayed because it is too small. No other programs are affected.

If you have any further ideas as to how to change the "system font" for the dialog boxes, I am all ears! THanks.

[RoryOF]

Try unchecking "Use system font for User Interface". If you had a system backup from before the date of the corruption, you could restore that.

[lgusaas]

If you have any further ideas as to how to change the "system font" for the dialog boxes, I am all ears! THanks.

Did you try my other suggestion to reset your user profile? Since you originally had no problem, resetting the user profile will probably/possibly correct the problem.

[RusFuture]

Hi there..
Ok, so I am getting *EXACTLY* the same problem that is discussed in this thread.
I can use the VIEW feature to expand the spreadsheet font, and the menu bars and my other screen display
stuff is just fine. But the fonts in the OpenOffice Dialog boxes are bizzaro tiny - little dribbly pseudo-glyphic
junk is all I can see. I have hacked a fair bit of config issues to get my Linux and Gnome desktop working
well on an old Intel Pentium box ( a DEC 5000, actually). It all runs really well. I thought I would try OpenOffice
to see if it would read my MS-Excel spreadsheets, and it just fires 'em up great! No problem! (Really nice,
actually - congrats to the developers of Open Office - nice piece o' work..)
But I can't find a resolution to this weird tiny font in the dialog box issue. I'm using an ordinary ACER
flatscreen monitor - and every other font in every other program is rendering fine - eg. Tck/Tk stuff, all the Gnome
tools, the Evince .PDF viewer, and the Firefox 3.0.5beta... etc. But the fonts inside the Open Office dialog boxes
are too small to read, so I can't try to fiddle with OO options, cause I can't what the heck they are!
There *MUST* be a fix to this - too many folks have reported it, yet I can't find the answer.
(If I find it, I will post it to this thread...)
Thanx for any ideas...
- Rus

[RusFuture]

<Solved>
Ok, well, here I am - posting the *Tiny font in OpenOffice Dialog Boxes* issue SOLUTION - at least
for my older copy ( I am running OpenOffice 2.4, which came default installed with my Fedora 9 Linux and
Gnome desktop).

On OpenOffice 2.4, the Tools option on the top menu bar is selected, and the last selection "Options" is
clicked, to get the unreadable dialog box of config options. Try to see if you can decode the leftside vertical
menubar box. The default highlighted bar is "User Data" on my version. Pressing "down-arrow" 4 times on your
keyboard , once you have the "OpenOffice.org" plusbox menu option expanded, will get you to the "View"
panel - which is labelled "Options - OpenOffice.org - View" in the window topline.

The topleft featurebox in this View config window is the "User Interface" sub-window. There is a nanomolecule
sized box labelled "Scaling" that you need to upclick from its default of "100%" to "130%". That will make the fonts
bigger - on the dialog boxes AND the windows. On my Gnome desktop, the window cells are now pretty
big - each cell is over one inch in length, the OpenOffice screen label fonts now look not too good - but the
fonts inside the cells look real nice (perhaps they are "Liberation Sans", as the topline dialogbox says?)
Oh, and I'm pretty sure you need to close OpenOffice and restart it before the upscaled fonts will appear
in the dialog boxes.

This fix worked very good for me.

There seems to be a disconnect between OpenOffice fonts, and SystemFonts. I don't now how this
works yet, but if you mess about, at least in Gnome/Fedora/OpenOffice you can find a nice match.

Once you get the scaling adjusted, and close and restart OpenOffice, and try to get a font that
comes close to what you had on your Excel/Windows sheets. All my old Excel 97 fonts are Arial, size 10,
and they look really *awful* when first loaded, since an MS TrueType font does not seem to be available.
You get this nasty, low-res default. But it is easy to fix.

I've found that selecting (via a control-A to "select the whole sheet"), and then a switch to
OpenOffice font Utopia (size 11), or DejaVu Sans 11, seem to work good. (I get a proper high-res
system font which lines up pretty close to what my Arial was in my various financial spreadsheets)

All in all, I am damned impressed with this OpenOffice thing. It pulled in a big MS-Excel-97 financial
spreadsheet, and with the Options / View / Scaling set to 130%, and a simple Control-A (select all)
to the sheet to change the font to "DejaVu Sans - size 11), I get a *very* workable spreadsheet.

Oh - YES - one more critical feature I discovered. I found it *critical* to set the "View/Zoom scaling"
from its system default of 80%, to 100% (ie. no scaling, I would assume) That way, a standard
MS-Excel sheet with Arial size 10 font can be loaded directly, and used with a "DejaVu Sans" size
11 pretty much without any fiddling. Note, this is the "Zoom..." factor scaling set by selecting
the top menubar View option, and then mousing down to the bottom of the drop down box, where
you see the word "Zoom". This has *no* effect on the dialog box issue, just the spreadsheet.
Setting zoom factor to 100% gives me a real nice, normal high-res font, which is very close to
Arial Truetype.

Ah, and one other item. For older, slower machines, where you are working with pre-built
older MS-Excel spreadsheets, just turn off all the Spell Checking features, by tweaking the
[ Tools/Options/Language Settings/Writing Aids ] panel, and turning off all spell checking. You get
much snappier spreadsheet operation. This assumes, of course, you know how to spell...
Hope this is useful.
- Rus

[scrathcyboy]

RoryOF -- I tried unchecking that box, it did nothing. Unless I need to shut down OO and restart it ?

lgusaas -- tell me how to wipe out the settings and that is the next thing I will try. Remember, this is a MAC, so I'm not too sure of where these settings are stuffed. I don't even mind reinstalling the APP, but I suspect the system settings will have more impact on this than just reinstalling. Please give the details of the procedure.

RusFuture -- I appreciate you jumping in with the same problem, but let's try to keep this focused on MAC and OO writer. A lot has been written on the Net about Spreadsheet problems, you might want to google them. BTW, I think this started when OO auto upgraded to 3, so a 2 solution likely won't work. It was fine on 2. If have tried adjusting the "scaling" to everything, but that affects the display of the FILE TEXT, it does not change the dialog boxes under Preferences, or any other dialog box, so your long SS post doesn't help.

Hagar Delest -- I didn't mean to appear ungrateful, and I'd appreciate you sticking with this thread. It is an issue many people have had, but no one seems to have solved, and my wife's MAC is completely "normal". I have to tell you all that she was in tears the entire day. She lost a whole day's work because of this IDIOTIC glitch -- talk about lack of program debugging by the authors !!

SO STICK WITH IT ALL, UNTIL WE SOLVE THIS CRAZY DEBACLE, PLEASE !!

[RoryOF]

RoryOF -- I tried unchecking that box, it did nothing. Unless I need to shut down OO and restart it ?

It never hurts to restart OpenOffice and the computer after making any low level reconfigurations of the program.

[lgusaas]

lgusaas -- tell me how to wipe out the settings and that is the next thing I will try. Remember, this is a MAC, so I'm not too sure of where these settings are stuffed. I don't even mind reinstalling the APP, but I suspect the system settings will have more impact on this than just reinstalling. Please give the details of the procedure.

I already gave you a link to the instructions in my first post. Please go back and read it carefully this time. I am not going to repeat myself.

[scrathcyboy]

Rus -- see my main post 3 above, before Rory's. This is NOT a text display problem in the file -- your entire post on spreadsheets seems to be taken up with font display in the FILE !! This has NOTHING to do with text display, which works fine. This is the DIALOG BOX display. PLEASE don't post extraneous ideas, it takes away other's abilities to focus on the real issue at hand. It is NOT spreadsheets, and it is NOT to do with text sizes!

[scrathcyboy]

lgusaas -- "I already gave you a link to the instructions in my first post. Please go back and read it carefully this time. I am not going to repeat myself."

You only posted a link to Hagar's instructions for Linux. It says NOTHING about a MAC. Seems like everyone else is running this on Linux, which is not identical to MAC. I don't see anything in his post about the MAC !! -- I am posting this in the MAC OSX section am I not? Is there not one person in this section running a MAC?

[lgusaas]

lgusaas -- "I already gave you a link to the instructions in my first post. Please go back and read it carefully this time. I am not going to repeat myself."

All you did was post a link to Hagar's instructions for Linux. It says NOTHING about a MAC. Seems like everyone else is running this on Linux, which is not identical to MAC. I don't see anything in his post about the MAC !!

Hagar's post "Resetting the user profile" which I gave a link to gave instructions on resetting your profile that are applicable to all operating systems. He mentioned Windows as well as Linux. I also gave a link to another post that explains where the user profile can be found in all operating systems. Hint: It said "See here for its location". I am not going to repeat in this thread information fully explained in the Tutorials that you have been given links to.

[scrathcyboy]

"I also gave a link to another post that explains where the user profile can be found in all operating systems. Hint: It said "See here for its location" ... "I am not going to repeat myself"

You did NOT. That phrase exists nowhere but just above. You said twice you won't repeat yourself, but you have with erroneous posts. Thanks for the screen shot, but other than that, you have not posted anything that helps, including erroneous repetition. Maybe drop off? so we won't have to read it 3 times again. I NEED to get this problem solved -- your repeating an ego position does not help anyone, least of all me, sorry.

[lgusaas]

"I also gave a link to another post that explains where the user profile can be found in all operating systems. Hint: It said "See here for its location" ... "I am not going to repeat myself"

You did NOT. That phrase exists nowhere but just above. You said twice you won't repeat yourself, but you have with erroneous posts. Thanks for the screen shot, but other than that, you have not posted anything that helps, including erroneous repetition. Maybe drop off? so we won't have to read it 3 times again. I NEED to get this problem solved -- your repeating an ego position does not help anyone, least of all me, sorry.

The Tutorial "Resetting the user profile" includes a link "See here for its location" that tells you the location of the user profile on Macs. Resetting your user profile will probably fix your problem. I repeat myself because you seem to be incapable of comprehending the explicit and clear instructions in the tutorial "Resetting the user profile". If you want to solve your problem, follow the instructions in that tutorial.

PS: I am a Mac user and I know what I am talking about. If you want help, you should quit insulting the people trying to give you help. We are all volunteers on this forum giving our time and knowledge to try and help other users of OOo.

[Hagar Delest]

• Rename the profile: change the \user folder (see here for its location) to \user.old for example.

[scrathcyboy]

Hagar -- I followed ALL your instructions to make a new profile -- and having done that, I got asked a lot of questions that I could not read, because, once again -- the fonts are TOO SMALL to read !! But I got through all that nonsense -- and I was running OO writer with a new profile -- and it is STILL just as screwed up as ever. Nothing on the dialog boxes is readable, no matter what I do. Yet ALL else on the MAC works FINE !!!

THis Open Office for MAC is one of the MOST USELESS programs I have ever seen. It is apparently written by kiddie morons who cannot even debug their worthless code properly to where it is even usable.

After wasting 2 DAYS on this garbage program -- we have totally DUMPED IT INTO THE TRASH. At least Word 98 for MAC functions to where you can use and read it, so we will HAVE to transfer to word .DOC files, since these lame-brained open office idiots cannot even write a program that functions -- TOTAL MORONS !!

FUTURE USERS BEWARE !!! DON"T EVEN THINK OF USING OPEN OFFICE ON THE MAC !!! IT IS GARBAGE !!!

------------- END OF THIS THREAD ---------------------- END OF QUESTION ----------------------- QUIT -----------

[RoryOF]

Readers might find it of interest to examine the previous postings of scrathyboy going back to early 2008 and decide for themselves from which source the problems arise.

[Hagar Delest]

Hagar -- I followed ALL your instructions to make a new profile -- and having done that, I got asked a lot of questions that I could not read, because, once again -- the fonts are TOO SMALL to read !! But I got through all that nonsense -- and I was running OO writer with a new profile -- and it is STILL just as screwed up as ever. Nothing on the dialog boxes is readable, no matter what I do. Yet ALL else on the MAC works FINE !!!

THis Open Office for MAC is one of the MOST USELESS programs I have ever seen. It is apparently written by kiddie morons who cannot even debug their worthless code properly to where it is even usable.

After wasting 2 DAYS on this garbage program -- we have totally DUMPED IT INTO THE TRASH. At least Word 98 for MAC functions to where you can use and read it, so we will HAVE to transfer to word .DOC files, since these lame-brained open office idiots cannot even write a program that functions -- TOTAL MORONS !!

FUTURE USERS BEWARE !!! DON"T EVEN THINK OF USING OPEN OFFICE ON THE MAC !!! IT IS GARBAGE !!!

------------- END OF THIS THREAD ---------------------- END OF QUESTION ----------------------- QUIT -----------

I just quote the post to keep the history in case of a future edit...
Topic locked (sadly, because there is real problem here. Some corner case that perhaps another user will help to fix).