Changing font size in WinSCP is wrong

Hello, Martin,

It would be great if we could change the font size in your program in some other way than via the system icon font size. Changing the environment settings because of just one program is really really not the way it should be, IMO. Now all icons on the desktop look ugly with mostly unfinished descriptions below them.

Other than that it's a great program, I find myself using it more and more for daily work.

I consider this a bug report, not a feature request.

You are right. But what makes WinSCP different that it needs a different font than all the other applications?

Hello again, Martin,

The problem is not with font, but more specifically with a font size. On large displays most people are using today it is usually completely fine when things like buttons + icons + interface messages are a bit "smaller" (because of the large size of display or large resolution on medium-sized display). It's because people don't work with OS interface for too long and it's mostly intuitive work anyway. Therefore it's very possible to LEAVE a small font size for stuff like message text size or icon text size. Icons actually look much better when their text descriptions are in small font size. Even small programs don't require their interface font size being different from default OS interface font size because user doesn't work with text in them for a long time. Think image resizers, games, etc.

But this is very different for programs like MS Word, Notepad++, Total Commander or WinSCP, where a user spends considerable time looking at lists of [sometimes very similar] files or lines or paragraphs of text. Eye strain was killing me when working with WinSCP for more than an hour. But when I changed the OS icon text size, then my desktop icons looked ugly: unfinished names or names displaying like this (you have to imagine the lines centered under an icon):
Router
Connectio
n

I mean OMG. It actually looks like an OS interface bug. That's why I think we need a small setting that would enable us to set a text size in WinSCP different than the OS icon text size. It's basically about eye strain and OS interface looking good.

An additional note: I can speak for Windows XP only, but I bet this kind of OS interface behavior is inherent to Win 2000, Win Vista or Win 7 too.

Thanks for a great program, btw. Even with fucked up icons on my desktop it works very well. I will be later just posting some performance issues with large remote files lists (more than 20000 files in one dir).

This request has been added to tracker.

Am I right that the last reply on tracker, at the time of this writing, is https://winscp.net/tracker/596#c2? Am I right that you suggest to change system wide settings? Am I right the submitter of the bug tried to explain why modification of system wide settings might not be that helpful? I think modifying system wide settings is not that helpful. With firefox, and maybe newer internet explorer, you have ctrl++ anf ctrl +-. Some sites used to suggests their audience to choose from 3 possible fonts size. With office and other editors, one can change the fonts size or the zoom. With a console/teminal, you can also change the fonts size. I think the listings in winScp are similar to the contents of a web page or an office document. I too think there should be an option to change the fonts size. I think an horizontal or vertical scroll bars should also be added when the fonts size makes the window larger then the display area.

guest858 wrote:

Am I right that the last reply on tracker, at the time of this writing, is https://winscp.net/tracker/596#c2? Am I right that you suggest to change system wide settings? Am I right the submitter of the bug tried to explain why modification of system wide settings might not be that helpful? I think modifying system wide settings is not that helpful. With firefox, and maybe newer internet explorer, you have ctrl++ anf ctrl +-. Some sites used to suggests their audience to choose from 3 possible fonts size. With office and other editors, one can change the fonts size or the zoom. With a console/teminal, you can also change the fonts size. I think the listings in winScp are similar to the contents of a web page or an office document. I too think there should be an option to change the fonts size. I think an horizontal or vertical scroll bars should also be added when the fonts size makes the window larger then the display area.

All the examples you gave are document-viewing applications. As you use them to view documents that are possibly created in a completely different environment, it's reasonable that they give you a way to zoom the view. But WinSCP file panel is closest to Windows Explorer. And that does not give you an option to change the zoom. As it displays a list using font size and face that's native to your system, not a document.