[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #59128] Bad default font choices on macOS 10.15 Catalina

[Andrew Janke]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?59128>

                 Summary: Bad default font choices on macOS 10.15 Catalina
                 Project: GNU Octave
            Submitted by: apjanke
            Submitted on: Fri 18 Sep 2020 04:13:41 AM EDT
                Category: GUI
                Severity: 3 - Normal
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Other
                  Status: None
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
                 Release: 6.0.90
         Discussion Lock: Any
        Operating System: Mac OS

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Details:

Hi folks!

I've started testing things out on macOS 10.15 Catalina, using Octave.app.

When I (and another user) run Octave.app for the first time, it comes up with
unusual, hard-to-read fonts for the Editor and Command Window. Instead of
Monaco (the usual default font on other macOS versions), it has "Al Bayan" for
the Editor and "Andale Mono" for the Command Window. Both of these fonts are
unsuitable for code, especially Al Bayan; they have bad spacing and
punctuation sizing issues in this context.

I suspect that Octave is not finding or choosing Monaco for some reason, and
is just falling back to the first fonts from the list of all fonts and
monospace fonts, respectively: Al Bayan and Andale Mono are first in my lists
of fonts.

Monaco does show up in the list of available fonts in the Font dropdowns in
preferences. If I select Monaco in preferences, it works and looks fine.

Seems to happen to both Octave 4.4.1 and 6.0.90.

Original user report here:
https://github.com/octave-app/octave-app/issues/195. (I think the fc-cache
error also reported there is a red herring and actually unrelated to this
default font selection.)

BTW, where does Octave even store these font preferences? I can't seem to
reset Octave to the defaults once I've selected an alternate prompt, even if I
`rm -rf ~/.config/octave ~/Library/Application\ Support/Octave.app`.



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File Attachments:


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri 18 Sep 2020 04:13:41 AM EDT  Name:
unreadable@Octave@fonts@on@Catalina.png  Size: 412KiB   By: apjanke

<http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/download.php?file_id=49807>

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