[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #55958] [octave forge] (symbolic) Incorrect symbolic dispay

[Andrew Janke]

Follow-up Comment #4, bug #55958 (project octave):

> Is the font chosen a macOS app packaging issue, or just a user configuration
issue?

>From what I understand, Monaco 10 point is the default that Octave itself
chooses on macOS. (Maybe inheriting from Qt's defaults?) The Octave.app
packaging does not make any changes to font selection or user preferences.

Maybe it should, though: Monaco 10 point is awfully small and hard to read,
even on a Retina screen. I think it might be a relic of an earlier time when
effective pixel sizes were slightly larger. Indeed, the first thing I do when
I install Octave on a Mac myself is to change its font to Menlo 12 point in
both Command Window and Editor. And other modern terminal programs, like Mac's
own Terminal.app, use Menlo as the default, and I believe they use 12 point as
the default size. IIRC, most editors use 12 point default, too.

If there's a decent supported way for the Octave packagers to change these
defaults, I'd be happy to have Octave.app switch to Menlo 12 as the default.
(Menlo is a macOS system font, so it's guaranteed to be available on all Mac
machines.)

And maybe you could consider changing the default in core Octave for future
releases?

Sorry about the inconvenience here. This is probably something that should
have occurred to us at Octave.app.

> There are no instructions on https://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_macOS on how
to go about upgrading. 

There's no upgrader built in to the app. Just download the new version from
http://octave-app.org/Download.html, install it manually, and delete the old
version if you'd like. (You can keep both versions installed side-by-side if
you want, so you can try out the new version before committing to it.)

There is a 5.1.0 beta available on the Developer Downloads page, if you want
to try it out for testing here.
http://octave-app.org/Developer-Downloads.html. Be warned - we are seeing
stability problems with this release/build, so I wouldn't upgrade to it as
your main Octave just yet.

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