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neilw · Dec 12, 2006, 11:18 PM

OK, I'm feeling pretty stupid. My Dad is using my old Titanium PowerBook (running 10.3.9) and is finding the system fonts to be too small for his eyes. I'm stumped how to make them bigger, short of reducing the resolution of the whole screen. On the Ti Powerbook, with its 768 lines of vertical resolution, I'd be pretty hesitant to reduce the resolution.

I can't even seem to find a hack to accomplish this, short of something like ShapeShifter (and that's a sledgehammer approach to this.) Am I missing something obvious? Is there any good solution?

Oh, I'll also show him the accessibility menu, but I don't think mega-zooming the whole screen is what he's after. Just wants to be able to read the fonts better.

Thanks for any suggestions...

brettcamp · Dec 13, 2006, 01:14 AM

How about Finder => View => View options => Text size and then increase to whatever's easier to read; I use 14 pt.
Not the most logical place to put this preference, I'll admit. Is this what your dad wants?

neilw · Dec 13, 2006, 09:23 AM

Well, I had forgotten about that setting, so thanks. But that only seems to affect the fonts in the main window; everything else in the system (including the shortcut bar on the left) stays small. I'm looking for a way to enlarge the system menus, title bar text, etc.

zro · Dec 13, 2006, 10:28 AM

Your display settings are the only way to achieve that.

khufuu · Dec 13, 2006, 10:56 AM

Try Silk. It'll cost you $10 but I think it's what you need.

NeilCharter · Dec 13, 2006, 12:04 PM

Originally Posted by khufuu

Try Silk. It'll cost you $10 but I think it's what you need.

Alternatively adjusting the screen resolution will help.

Also Apple does provide the means to zoom in the screen plus some other things via Universal Access for those with sight difficulties. Not too sure that that will help in this case.

I worked for an aging professor who would repeatedly miss things on the screen cos he was just focusing on a single area. My dad does the same thing now. It is related to sight but also to not being very comfortable with a computer. Again I'm don't know if this applies to your dad.

Simon · Dec 13, 2006, 12:19 PM

Do you have a scroll wheel mouse? Try holding ctrl and using the scroll wheel.

mitchell_pgh · Dec 13, 2006, 02:20 PM

Originally Posted by NeilCharter

Alternatively adjusting the screen resolution will help

IMHO, the best advice for older eyes. Regardless of how hard you adjust things, there will always be an application that doesn't conform. Bumping the res solves it everywhere.

PER3 · Dec 13, 2006, 03:23 PM

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

IMHO, the best advice for older eyes. Regardless of how hard you adjust things, there will always be an application that doesn't conform. Bumping the res solves it everywhere.

Can't agree. Simon was right—much simpler to just hold the control (Apple) button, and roll your scroll wheel forward. Enlarges the entire screen. At least in 10.4.8.

Works for the whole display, not just applications.

zro · Dec 13, 2006, 08:51 PM

Zoom isn't meant for slight vision problems. Also, it's temporary and on screen items disappear the more you zoom in. Setting a lower resolution is more permanent and sounds like a better solution for the OP.

NeilCharter · Dec 14, 2006, 02:03 AM

Originally Posted by PER3

Can't agree. Simon was right—much simpler to just hold the control (Apple) button, and roll your scroll wheel forward. Enlarges the entire screen. At least in 10.4.8.

Works for the whole display, not just applications.

Yup the scroll wheel / ctrl does work well with the zoom and moving the mouse will move the screen focus as well as the pointer.

However, you can't see the whole desktop which could be confusing for some.

neilw · Dec 14, 2006, 09:17 AM

First of all, I had no idea about that control-scroll wheel. That's very cool. Did it work in Panther too? My Dad's running 10.3.9.

My main concern with lowering the resolution is that the resulting resolution will be inadequate for comfortable OSX use. we'll try that approach, probably, and see if he's happy with it.

Silk might do the trick here, but I'll probably need to set it up for him. I'll install it on my machine and experiment with it. It looks promising. It's funny, I actually browsed through the Unsanity site to see if anything was applicable, and I completely missed/forgot about Silk.

Thanks for all the good input.

OreoCookie · Dec 14, 2006, 10:47 AM

I would second the suggestion to use Universal Access to solve this. As long as there are no resolution-independent UIs (should be introduced with 10.5), this is the simplest way to go.

PER3 · Dec 15, 2006, 09:04 AM

A friend of mine who's legally blind was very happy when I showed him the Zoom function. He uses it all the time doing work on LightWave, FCP and so on. Sure the fuzziness is a bit of a bother at high magnifications, but it does the trick and will do it even better when Leopard comes out (apart from the fact that some controls aren't actually text, but small graphics of text and won't scale up until this is changed).

guerrillazoo · Dec 24, 2006, 12:38 AM

Hey there--

Try using Quartz Debug

/Developer/Applications/Performance Tools/Quartz Debug.app

and hit Command-U to scale the user interface resolution to the scale you like. Make sure and uncheck "Restore scale factor to default on quit". Now, all programs you open will have their menu bar and text scaled to specification (this behaviour remains set even after logout/logon). Some (like Firefox) will be badly pixellated on higher scale factors (~1.5) but (e.g.) Safari in this case looks fine. You will need to logout/logon to see the effects in Finder, since this can't be closed/reopened while logged on.

I found this esp. useful for my mom and dad who were having trouble with the small system fonts (esp. in Menu Bar and system messages).

guerrillazoo · Dec 24, 2006, 12:42 AM

Apologies--I'm running 10.4.x and I see the original poster is running 10.3.something. I'm not sure what the status of Quartz Debug.app is in 10.3. So no idea if my suggestion will work for you. Sorry!

guerrillazoo · Dec 24, 2006, 03:17 PM

Ah--please note: the QuartzDebug-scaling approach is not without problems... some apps really dislike being scaled, and scrolling seems to be a general problem. Many dialogues become unusable. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Chuckit · Dec 24, 2006, 05:52 PM

Originally Posted by guerrillazoo

Apologies--I'm running 10.4.x and I see the original poster is running 10.3.something. I'm not sure what the status of Quartz Debug.app is in 10.3. So no idea if my suggestion will work for you. Sorry!

It won't work in 10.3. The groundwork for resolution independence was laid in 10.4.