I would like to be able to zoom in and out by smaller increments above 150%.
Using Arial or Calibri size 12, being zoomed to 100% is quite small, and I rarely drop below 130%, which is not appreciably different than my (Scrivener’s) default zoom of 135%, and am typically at 145 or 150, without it seeming especially out-sized or “zoomed in.” But above 150, it starts taking off and quickly becomes too (if not impractically) large. Changing font sizes isn’t a good option, as it makes swapping between Scriv and other apps cumbersome. I like that the range goes from 25% to 800%. But it would be nice if the middle range between 150 and 300 was more granular.
I’m on windows. Don’t know if or how it differs on the Mac side.
Ideally, I think it would be best if zooming were designed to vary across a continuum as opposed to discrete values, much like how it’s to some extent set up in Microsoft Word.
I’m not sure if the situation is similar on the Windows side, but the reason the Mac version has a limited selection of choices rather than a slider is that the core text engine we use there is a bit fragile around zoom settings. A slider would probably just corrupt the view and require a restart.
Yeah, regardless of computing resources. It’s a problem with the coding toolkit, deep bugs in the text engine basically—stuff that has been there for years. There are even more glitches at odd number zoom settings than even number. With an odd number you can sometimes get “striping” through the text, setting zoom to an even number makes it go away; rounding errors in the text redraw code, perhaps. There were (probably still are) some ugly bugs that make the text bounce up and down as you type. There may be more techniques that can be used to get around other problems, beyond the many patches already researched and implemented, but these things can be difficult.
Again, that’s all very Mac-specific information. The current Windows design is just based off of what we have in the Mac. If it is feasible to do something more (a jump to zoom setting and maybe a slider) with it in the future, it seems reasonable to me, I can’t think of many reasons to restrict zoom arbitrarily, that’s just how it ended up needing to be. It’s also a lot easier to code a fixed list, which is important when you’re working hard to catch up with a moving target that is years ahead.
How is it that Microsoft Word is able to do it without crashing? Also, you can type in fonts smaller than font sizes of 9 (something I need to do currently to type out a crib sheet for an upcoming test). The machine doesn’t crash. It would be nice if there were a way to input font sizes manually thus, as well as type in font sizes smaller than 9.
As for zoom increments, though, custom zoom settings are coming with 3.0 - we just don’t promise they won’t result in some weird drawing artefacts from time to time.
This has me (idly) curious, now. Does Word for Mac have issues related to the bugs being discussed here?
In my version of Word 2007, on Windows 7, the zoom moves up and down from 100% in 5% increments without any pronounced issues, other than that some of the odd multiples have what look like aliasing problems – font scaling seems to prefer rounder numbers.
Does the Word for Mac UI limit possible zoom settings to accommodate the text rendering issues?
One thing that’s nice about how Word works on Windows is that you can type in an exact percentage (88%, 117%). But with 5% increments throughout its range, it’s easy enough to get something that works without manual input, so nice as manual input is, in practice it’s not terribly useful.
If Scrivener allowed a manually entered zoom setting, that could be sufficient… but then having to reset it manually every time would (speaking for myself) tend to discourage use… which would then lead to a Wish List post asking to be able to save a custom setting as a preset…
I just started using a monitor with a native 1920x1080 resolution, on a 17" screen (touchscreen, no less), on W8.1 (where I’ve yet to install Word), and that has altered my perception of text and object sizes. What I’m finding is that my Scrivener default of 135% (I think that’s how it is out of the box) is now much smaller than what I’ve been used to, that I’m now hitting 150% sooner, at which point the increments quickly become too large.
Word’s text system has nothing to do with Scrivener’s. They are entirely different and therefore are of course prone to entirely different sets of bugs.
I don’t know why manually entering the zoom would be a problem for you. It will obviously be saved between launches and could be saved into a template or as a default.
You seemed to be saying that there were constraints on Scrivener’s zooming due to bugs in how the Mac handles text. I was wondering if those bugs created comparable constraints for Word for Mac, and if therefore its zoom implementation differed from that on Word for Windows, where the zoom steps are constant throughout its range.
If a manually entered zoom could be saved as a default or preset then it would obviously be easy to switch to. If it couldn’t, then it would need to be re-entered manually, a multi-step process that might not be worth doing given (as in my prev post) a sufficiently granular zoom range that could get you close enough to any desired setting. That the last zoom setting is saved for the next launch isn’t really a factor unless you never change the zoom setting, in which case you can set it once and forget it.
There were (probably still are) some ugly bugs that make the text bounce up and down as you type. There may be more techniques that can be used to get around other problems, beyond the many patches already researched and implemented, but these things can be difficult.
