Friday Facts #243 - New GUI tileset

[mrvn]

The point is that I have multiple monitors on which I play and every time I switch I have to change the setting.

Pardon? When you go to one computer and set the scale, then you go to the other computer and the scale from the first computer follows? You change it in one and it changes in all others?

Sure. I have a shared home directory so the setting follows me around.

Alternatively try plugging your laptop with full-hd display into an external monitor with 4k or vice versa.

[Sigma1]

BTW Factorio looks incredibly good with monospace as the font everywhere!

Pics or it didn't happen!

Here you go!
Ignore the mods and me being in cheat mode

[Avezo]

No right place to ask this, but are you guys prepared for tomorrow's GDPR coming into life in EU? Or will forums be down for a while? Afaik you need to allow people to completely wipe their accounts, posts etc. Never seen you mentioning it before and fines are high, so I'm just worried.

[Deadly-Bagel]

The process doesn't have to be automatic, and the only relevant data is the email address which can be edited out yourself. Perhaps Wube have IP address logs somewhere but those can be cleared on demand. If you've put any personal info in posts then you can go back and edit those posts as necessary.

[mrvn]

BTW Factorio looks incredibly good with monospace as the font everywhere!

Pics or it didn't happen!

Here you go!
Ignore the mods and me being in cheat mode

You should have used a dot-matrix font: https://www.google.com/search?q=dot+matrix+font

[Sigma1]

BTW Factorio looks incredibly good with monospace as the font everywhere!

Pics or it didn't happen!

Here you go!
Ignore the mods and me being in cheat mode

You should have used a dot-matrix font: https://www.google.com/search?q=dot+matrix+font

Gotta try that at some point too

[Dev-iL]

You should have used a dot-matrix font: https://www.google.com/search?q=dot+matrix+font

I have mixed feelings about this... It requires to increase the UI scale, otherwise the font has some display issues.

[Oktokolo]

You should have used a dot-matrix font: https://www.google.com/search?q=dot+matrix+font

I have mixed feelings about this... It requires to increase the UI scale, otherwise the font has some display issues.

The font looks good except for the zeros. But the window titles need some spacing from the top border.

[Sigma1]

A seven segment font looks really factorio-y for the numbers. This one is a bit odd with text though.

Might be great with monospace for the text?

[ssilk]

@Sigma1: I looked a while at that and I think for numbers that goes into a good direction.

1) DPI uses the inch. The imperial measure system should have been eridicated long time ago. It is so bad, it is known for decades, and yet still people use it. Please stop!
2) Well, as long as all the gui elements are scalable, it is not a problem. Currently, one pixel in the toolset is one pixel in 200% ui scale. Why would we specify some other unit like 1/63360 of mile to measure anything, if it doesn't rely in any way to the way it works. Pixels do.

Touché! I didn't know a better scale to put on your slider. Pixels per mm? Points might work, but after reading the Wikipedia page on them, there isn't really an international consensus on that unit either. I guess scalable pixels are good, but I still advocate for a device independent coordinate system.

About fixed-size units vs. relative units:
https://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/units.en.html

https://webplatform.github.io/docs/tuto ... css-units/

[Avezo]

Google 'metric time' and see how fun it was when they tried it.

Not everything works well when metric.

[thereaverofdarkness]

All of those monospace text images above look awful. The problem with monospace is that it has to fit thin letters like l into the same space as wide letters like W. I exclusively use monospace typefaces for arranging text into columns when I don't want to bother using column functions in a more advanced text editor. I have my notepad set to use Courier New. It's ugly but gets the job done. Everywhere else I use a better looking typeface.

I guess that's why they recommend comic sans for Dyslexics. it's a sans serif font (which they recommend) but distinguishes the I.

There is a problem going about with typefaces in which most of the ones without serifs also remove the uppercase I wings. Those wings are not a serif, they are a fundamental part of the letter, much like the marks on the number 1. People who write uppercase I and lowercase l the same are doing it out of brevity, and they tend to write the number 1 the same way. There is no need for a typeface to do this, rather to the contrary there is a need that they don't.

Comic Sans is a good typeface for dyslexic people, but if we just had people actually try to use their typeface before shoving it off as a success, we'd have much better typefaces and probably lots that dyslexic people could easily use. I'm aware that people got college degrees to make these, and put years of work into one typeface. I think they did an appallingly poor job with 95% of them, and I think I could do better.

[Sigma1]

People who write uppercase I and lowercase l the same are doing it out of brevity, and they tend to write the number 1 the same way.

Fun fact: in elementary school we were taught that you should write the number 1 without the little mark so it doesn't get confused with 7...
Needless to say, I started using the marks again the moment I got to a higher grade and had a different teacher.

What is it with people wanting to make symbols indistinguishable from each other?

[thereaverofdarkness]

Fun fact: in elementary school we were taught that you should write the number 1 without the little mark so it doesn't get confused with 7...

I have heard people say that, and once had someone actually confuse my handwritten 1s with my 7s. I write very clearly and both 1 and 7 were present in the document they were reading, so I am at a loss as to how they found that confusing. I even write the little wings at the base of the 1.

[Light]

People who write uppercase I and lowercase l the same are doing it out of brevity, and they tend to write the number 1 the same way.

Fun fact: in elementary school we were taught that you should write the number 1 without the little mark so it doesn't get confused with 7...
Needless to say, I started using the marks again the moment I got to a higher grade and had a different teacher.

What is it with people wanting to make symbols indistinguishable from each other?

In the working world, especially construction, chemistry, and other fields, mistaking numbers and symbols is an issue that could have devastating effects if the person doesn't clarify what's written ahead of the job. Accidents can occur, work delayed due to the mistake, incorrect readings on gauges compared to the paper, etc.

In instances of conversions or measurement this clarity is especially important or accidents happen such as this plane which crashed when the tanks weren't filled enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider (This could have easily happened with a 153 L number actually meant to read 753 L. I've seen that mistake before.)

I've most certainly worked with people who can't write for shit and needed to have their work re-written by a co-worker or supervisor so we don't make mistakes on the task at hand. It's not common but it does occur, which is why my team always keeps in touch with the contracted workers to ensure paperwork is legible and understood by all before work commences.

[kovarex]

How could you read 1 as 7, when 7 is written like this? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... tten_7.svg

[thereaverofdarkness]

Most people draw a line through the center of their 7 to make it clearer but I skip this as mine are plenty clear enough without it. The most important thing is that the person doing the writing should have the presence of mind to read their own handwriting and decide if it really is legible, and take steps to correct that if necessary. There are lots of ways to make your 1 and 7 look different. You can spend extra effort to ensure the top of the 7 is horizontal, you can give the 7 a center line, you can draw the 1 as a line if you ensure it doesn't create other problems on the document. Problems don't happen because people can't write clearly, they happen because people don't write clearly.

[seePyou]

How could you read 1 as 7, when 7 is written like this? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... tten_7.svg

It must be a cultural thing; I was taught in school to write my 7 like in this picture, and handwritten 7s and 1s are thus always clearly separate. However, I have seen many English speaking people write 7 without the little horizontal line across the slanted stem of the number. They write it just like it is with this font, 7
However, in handwritten fashion, where people are rushing their writing, a 1 and a 7, if written in the same way this font presents them, will be confusing.

From the Greek Wikipedia, translated:
Most Europeans, except the British [1], and South Americans write 7 with the horizontal line in the middle ("7"). This additional line serves to clearly distinguish the symbol 7 from the symbol 1, as these may appear similar in some handwritting styles. The 7th with the additional horizontal line is taught as the official handwritten form in primary schools in Russia, Ukraine, Poland and other Slavic countries [2], as well as in France and Romania [3]. [and Greece]

[cpy]

I like what devs are doing, those screenshots with that font is just plain ugly.

[Omnifarious]

Touché! I didn't know a better scale to put on your slider. Pixels per mm? Points might work, but after reading the Wikipedia page on them, there isn't really an international consensus on that unit either. I guess scalable pixels are good, but I still advocate for a device independent coordinate system.

About fixed-size units vs. relative units:
https://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/units.en.html

https://webplatform.github.io/docs/tuto ... css-units/

Yeah, I was initially thinking that an absolute system was the way to go, but that's not OK either. And for some small number of things l(ike the width of borders) px is sort of OK. But as it is, px is overused, and often in an obnoxious heavy-handed way.

I guess that vw unit described in your second link is the unit I would prefer see the most widely used though em is also a very good unit to use in many situations. And the other viewport pased units (vh, vmin, and vmax) probably also have their uses. In HTML, I think all images should have the size in the tag and that size should be specified in a viewport based unit or em.

Some of the errors in my original thinking were made concrete for me because I had a 28" 4k monitor delivered to me two days ago. Of course, one of the first things I did was test it out with Factorio. And while I set Factorio to 175% scale on my 4k laptop, I only set it to 125% on my 4k monitor because it's bigger. So the way Factorio currently deals with units + the scale factor has served me well here.

BTW, thanks for the interesting links.