[Kst] [Bug 109469] New: Font size increments often have no effect

[Nicolas Brisset]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109469         
           Summary: Font size increments often have no effect
           Product: kst
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: unspecified
        OS/Version: Solaris
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: kst kde org
        ReportedBy: nicolas.brisset eurocopter com


Version:           1.2.0_devel (using KDE 3.4.0, compiled sources)
Compiler:          gcc version 3.4.3
OS:                SunOS (sun4u) release 5.8

When making increments in the font size spinboxes ("Appearance" tab in the plot dialog), the corresponding labels do not always change. This is especially true with my XP+Cygwin/XFree 86 on Solaris setup, where I typically need to change the numbers from 0 to 5 to 10 to see something change (values in between do not have any effect).

I understand that kst does not work directly with point sizes as in word processors for example. This value rather seems to be a relative size, but I've never been able to figure out what the number exactly represents.

I don't know whether that bug really needs to be fixed (typically bug #109467 would allow us to live without resolving this one) but even on Linux, I find it disturbing when I change sizes and nothing happens. This is probably linked with font substitutions or other platform-dependent issues, maybe not so trivial to fix. 

One solution (I have no idea whether it is technically feasible) might be to compute the next value that really results in a visible change, and set it automatically. To illustrate this better, imagine the sequence:
1) the user creates plots and curves, and finds Y axis labels to be too small
2) the plot dialog is called, "Appearance" tab
3) font size for y axis is "0", he/she clicks on the spinbox
4) kst computes the resulting label size, and if it is still the same as with "0" automatically increments it again. This can be repeated until the resulting value really brings a change. It might be "5", or "10", at least the user needs just one click to increment size by one "step".

A better solution would of course be to let the requested sizes increment with a step of 1, but compute internally the right font size to use so that the labels are actually drawn bigger.