[defsquad]

So now that Leopard is out and has the nifty Core Text stuff, and some evidence of resolution independence, does this mean that we can finally change font families and font-sizes on a system wide basis? Here is what I'm looking for (and frankly I'm still surprised it's not possible without unsanity apps -- pre-leopard since their apps don't work in leopard yet):

font families and font size changes to the menubar (this would need to be something that is application wide and should include font sizes of items such as the clock/date/etc.

application overrides of fonts, for instance, the fonts for the menus and title bar and bookmarks in firefox and even safari are much larger than i'd prefer.

mimic what tinkertool tried to do, basically, but take it to the next level (hopefully leopard allows this).

i'm seriously just so shocked that in windows and linux (ubuntu is all i can comment on in terms of linux) allows for finer details of font changes throughout the gui; yet, osx, THE premiere os for designers and generally revered for it's customization abilities just doesn't allow the changing of something seemingly so simple as fonts.

you may say to me, "defsquad, why don't you just increase your resolution, or even get a monitor that supports an even higher resolution". and to that i say, been there and done that. my mbp is 1440x900 (not that high of a resolution, but shouldn't have fonts that are 18px+ in size by default); surprisingly its even worse on my 1680x1050 external lcd. the larger the resolution, it seems like things don't scale to pack more in a larger pixel area.

anyway, if any of you gurus of gui have suggestions or know something that the commoner such as myself, please let us (me) know.

i'd go so far as to fedex you a six pack of the beer of your choice (is that even possible to do?).

[revmitcz]

I did a spotlight search for "coretext" (make sure to include system files in that search, using the "+" button) and found something at :
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CoreText.framework/Versions/A/Resources/
called "DefaultFontFallbacks.plist"

Inside the file, it shows a bunch of font names. But, there's a warning :

<!-- default ordered fallback list - fallback entity has to be postscript name -->
<key>default</key>
<array>
<string>LucidaGrande</string> <!-- MAKE sure this matches the kCTFontSystemFontType in CTFontDescriptorCreateForUIType() & TDescriptorSourceImp::CreateDefaultDescriptor()! -->

Also, there's no font sizes listed.

However, around that same area, you'll find in /BridgeSupport a file called "CoreTextFull.bridgesupport" and inside of that, I found things like :

<enum name='kCTFontEmphasizedSystemDetailFontType' value='20'/>
<enum name='kCTFontEmphasizedSystemFontType' value='3'/>
<enum name='kCTFontExpandedTrait' value='32'/>
<enum name='kCTFontFreeformSerifsClass' value='1879048192'/>
<enum name='kCTFontHorizontalOrientation' value='1'/>
<enum name='kCTFontItalicTrait' value='1'/>
<enum name='kCTFontLabelFontType' value='10'/>
<enum name='kCTFontMenuItemCmdKeyFontType' value='14'/>
<enum name='kCTFontMenuItemFontType' value='12'/>
<enum name='kCTFontMenuItemMarkFontType' value='13'/>
<enum name='kCTFontMenuTitleFontType' value='11'/>

I have no idea what any of this means, but uhh.. that's what I got

[Chuckit]

Those things in Bridge Support are unrelated to font sizes. They're "magic numbers" intended for programming languages.

[defsquad]

thanks fellas for doing the initial digging on this. i'll start looking around the same areas.

i really really hope this is something that can be changed.

am i the only one that just can't imagine apple making it this hard to changing something seemingly so simple?

thanks again.