Windows Font Scaling Issue/Truncated Options→Configure tabs

Liam|Dyalog · Post by **Liam|Dyalog** » Thu Oct 28, 2010 3:25 pm

[Edited 5 July 2018 to update links to font fix zip file.]

I have come across a Microsoft Windows 7 font scaling issue that can affect windows various applications including the windows version of Dyalog APL.

The issue manifests itself in the form of certain fonts not displaying in the correct size within affected applications. To illustrate this I’ve taken some screenshots of the issue occurring within the Dyalog APL Configuration whilst running Dyalog APL 12.1.

: Windows 7 Font Scaling Issue (Broken)

They should appear like this:

: Windows 7 Font Scaling Issue (Fixed)

After doing a bit of research I came across an blog. If you fancy a bit of a read or want to know a little more behind the cause of this issue then feel free to have a look, however the abridged (tl;dr) version is as below.

The fix involves making some somewhat simple modifications to the windows registry to alter which files windows uses to display a couple of older bitmap style fonts. You can either do this manually by reading and following the blog or by adding the content of the FontFix.reg file created by David Musgrave to your registry. If you simply attempt to run the .reg file, the windows registry editor should pick this up and add it to your registry.

As this is a windows font issue, whilst we may be able to remove this issue completely from future versions of Dyalog APL, without the registry changes this problem would still affect other applications.

Caveats

As a matter of caution you should backup your registry before editing it.
These particular registry changes will not take effect until the system has been restarted. You MUST reboot your machine after making the registry changes.
As described in the blog the FontFix.reg file only fixes this issue for MS Sans Serif, MS Serif and Courier fonts; however as MS Sans Serif is the standard dexterity "System" font I would imagine this is the font that will affect most applications and indeed is the only one required to fix Dyalog APL.
As described on the blog the FontFix.reg file has been designed for an English Windows 7 system and may not work on other system configurations.