Any way to make the text on the Scratch interface larger?

[1775]

I am running Scratch on Raspbian Jessie. The screen resolution is fine for most things but the text on the Scratch menus is minuscule as is the text on the programming blocks. Scratch increased to full screen is no better - and Raspbian does not let one change monitor resolution on the fly - it requires changing the config files and rebooting each time to go from one resolution to another. I see no settings on the Scratch interface at all. Any way to do this - easily?

[rpdom]

Haven't you already asked this once today?

Ah, yes. Here it is viewtopic.php?f=66&t=124151&p=833640#p833640
and you got a reply too

You can change the resolution in Raspbian with the tvservice command and may also need to use fbset and xrefresh.

[1775]

I saw that response and it is not what I am asking. I know - as said - that I can go through the config file for Raspbian - but I don't want to touch that. Other software running on Raspbian each have a way to increase the size of the text and/or interface to be able to see it with limited vision. This is what I am asking here specifically about Scratch. If not - say so, and that is that and I will give up on Scratch as a programming option.

[timrowledge]

Yes, you can change the text size in Scratch, though it isn't provided by any of the menus. I'd be happy to add something for that if you can convince someone at the foundation to add it to my list.

For now you can get the effect you need by editing a '.po' file. What is one of those? Glad you asked...

First, you need to copy a file -
Open a terminal and enter

Code: Select all

sudo cp /usr/share/scratch/locale/Scratch.pot /usr/share/scratch/locale/ex.po

Then we need to edit ex.po

Code: Select all

sudo nano /usr/share/scratch/locale/ex.po

A)where it says

Code: Select all

msgid "Language-Name"
msgstr ""

Replace the blank string with something like "English-large"
B) Then a few lines later you will see

Code: Select all

msgid "Font-Scale"
msgstr ""

Again, replace the blank string with a suitable number - try something like 1.6 to start with.
Save the file and restart Scratch. Now in the list of languages you get by clicking on the globe icon there will be new entry for English-large.
Change the number as needed to suit your screen and eyes. It works pretty well as long as you stick to modest numbers. 10 just isn't going to work well.

[1775]

Wonderful! Thank you so much!!! This is exactly what I wanted and it is perfect. No more eye strain!

Again, Thank you!

[timrowledge]

You're welcome. Never be afraid to ask for new things or improvements to Scratch; I may not be able to solve everything but I certainly can't solve something I don't know is broken!

[timrowledge]

See also viewtopic.php?p=852670#p852670 for a much simpler way to change the base size of the fonts introduced in the November '15 release !