This has probably been covered before, but I wonder if someone can
tell me why the minimum line thickness in object graphics plots seems
to be 2 pixels (at least in Windows). This seems to have changed in
version 6; my object graphics plots now look rather clunky.

Thanks

Brad

Brad Gom writes:

> This has probably been covered before, but I wonder if someone can
> tell me why the minimum line thickness in object graphics plots seems
> to be 2 pixels (at least in Windows). This seems to have changed in
> version 6; my object graphics plots now look rather clunky.

Clunky!? Now don't be saying that. We are on a mission
in this newsgroup to get people to use those great
new iTools, and this kind of thing is not helpful. :-(

Actually, I just started up IDL 5.6 and IDL 6.0 simultaneously,
and ran my XPLOT program. It seems to *me* the object
graphics in IDL 5.6 are the clunkier. Certainly
the lines appear thicker there then in the IDL 6.0
version. The text is *definitely* clunkier in IDL 5.6.
I *love* the new object text in IDL 6.0! Can't we please
have this in direct graphics, too? 

Cheers,

David

P.S. My father's in town and I'm going out tomorrow
to play golf with my 50+ year old clubs. He cringes
and tries to pretend he doesn't know me (although
God knows I look more and more like my father every
day). I imagine it would be like going to play tennis
with my buddies and having my father show up with
the Jimmy Conner's edition of the old T-2000.

Anyway (there is a point to this), I imagine
those of us still partial to the simplicity and
comfort of direct graphics will (eventually) look
a little old fashioned around here. :-)

-- 
David W. Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Phone: 970-221-0438, E-mail: david@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155

David Fanning wrote:
> Brad Gom writes:
> 
>>This has probably been covered before, but I wonder if someone can
>>tell me why the minimum line thickness in object graphics plots seems
>>to be 2 pixels (at least in Windows). This seems to have changed in
>>version 6; my object graphics plots now look rather clunky.
> 
> Clunky!? Now don't be saying that. We are on a mission
> in this newsgroup to get people to use those great
> new iTools, and this kind of thing is not helpful. :-(

You can always tell a pioneer. He's the one with the arrows in his back. 
(Or she.)

> Actually, I just started up IDL 5.6 and IDL 6.0 simultaneously,
> and ran my XPLOT program. It seems to *me* the object
> graphics in IDL 5.6 are the clunkier. Certainly
> the lines appear thicker there then in the IDL 6.0
> version. The text is *definitely* clunkier in IDL 5.6.
> I *love* the new object text in IDL 6.0! Can't we please
> have this in direct graphics, too?

They look identical to me on screen. Not particularly clunky, just 
lines. Ditto on the printer.

Perhaps there's some other difference between your 5.6 and 6.0 
environments. Software vs hardware rendering? Default window size?

-- 
Mark Hadfield            "Ka puwaha te tai nei, Hoea tatou"
m.hadfield@niwa.co.nz
National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA)

Mark Hadfield writes:

> They look identical to me on screen. Not particularly clunky, just 
> lines. Ditto on the printer.
> 
> Perhaps there's some other difference between your 5.6 and 6.0 
> environments. Software vs hardware rendering? Default window size?

No, I tried this with both hardware and software rendering.
My IDL 5.6 line looks, well, fatter than my IDL 6.0 line.
Weird, huh!?

Cheers,

David

P.S. And I just checked to be sure they were both
finding exactly the same program. They were. Could
be fuel for the Mystery of the Month feature. :-)

-- 
David W. Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Phone: 970-221-0438, E-mail: david@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155

Now are you sure David that the desire to justify the cost of the
upgrade is not affecting your judgement here? :-)

Cheers,
Pavel

David Fanning wrote:
> 
> Mark Hadfield writes:
> 
> > They look identical to me on screen. Not particularly clunky, just
> > lines. Ditto on the printer.
> >
> > Perhaps there's some other difference between your 5.6 and 6.0
> > environments. Software vs hardware rendering? Default window size?
> 
> No, I tried this with both hardware and software rendering.
> My IDL 5.6 line looks, well, fatter than my IDL 6.0 line.
> Weird, huh!?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> David
> 
> P.S. And I just checked to be sure they were both
> finding exactly the same program. They were. Could
> be fuel for the Mystery of the Month feature. :-)
> 
> --
> David W. Fanning, Ph.D.
> Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
> Phone: 970-221-0438, E-mail: david@dfanning.com
> Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
> Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155

Pavel Romashkin writes:

> Now are you sure David that the desire to justify the cost of the
> upgrade is not affecting your judgement here? :-)

You may be right. I would have been better off writing
the check for the Head rackets with the new liquid
metal intelligence built right into them. :-(

Cheers,

David

P.S. Let's just say I was turning heads yesterday
when I went down to the driving range to practice
a bit ahead of the big match tomorrow with my
father. Some of those young guys had never seen
woods made of wood! :-)

-- 
David W. Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Phone: 970-221-0438, E-mail: david@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155

I think I have found the problem. (For reference, this is on a windows
2000 machine) The line thickness, font size and kerning seem to be
determined by the screen size. This is silly. When I run IDL on a
single display (1280 x 1024) and type XPLOT, the object graphics lines
and fonts seem fine. (I agree that the font -rendering- is much better
in version 6). When I use the dual display with a screen size of 2560
x 1024, the plot lines are thicker and the text changes size (the
y-axis text doesn't fit in the window). IDL seems to get the screen
size at startup to determine these parameters, since I can change back
to the large desktop size while IDL is still running, and the
lines/fonts stay thin/well-behaved.

Maybe this is only a problem for dual display systems, as you may not
notice thicker lines on a single display with similar resolution.

Any ideas how to get around this, apart from not using a dual display
system?
This means that my application that has several object graphics plots,
has to be coded differently for different screen sizes, or else the
fonts will be too big or small, and the lines will be too fat or thin,
depending on whether I run it on my laptop or my desktop -even if the
widgets are exactly the same size in pixels!

Brad


David  Fanning <david@dfanning.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.19ef8a177e164b4a98970d@news.frii.com>...
> Mark Hadfield writes:
> 
> > They look identical to me on screen. Not particularly clunky, just 
> > lines. Ditto on the printer.
> > 
> > Perhaps there's some other difference between your 5.6 and 6.0 
> > environments. Software vs hardware rendering? Default window size?
> 
> No, I tried this with both hardware and software rendering.
> My IDL 5.6 line looks, well, fatter than my IDL 6.0 line.
> Weird, huh!?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> David
> 
> P.S. And I just checked to be sure they were both
> finding exactly the same program. They were. Could
> be fuel for the Mystery of the Month feature. :-)

With regard to my previous posting, here are some screen shots showing
an object graphics application where nothing has changed except the
desktop size when IDL is loaded:(single display to dual display, or
1280x1024 to 2560x1024)

http://people.uleth.ca/~brad.gom/small_scrn.png
http://people.uleth.ca/~brad.gom/big_scrn.png

The same effects are seen in the XPLOT program, for example.

I will have to reinstall version 5.4 to see if this is a new problem,
but I don't remember it happening before..

Brad

Brad Gom writes:

> I think I have found the problem. (For reference, this is on a windows
> 2000 machine) The line thickness, font size and kerning seem to be
> determined by the screen size.

Yes, I think you may be right. I'm running on a dual-
monitor machine. I'll have to play around with monitor
settings, etc. to see if I can figure this out.

Cheers,

David 

-- 
David W. Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Phone: 970-221-0438, E-mail: david@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155