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@gwuen gwuen commented Jun 17, 2025

On Unix systems, the wxWidgets / wxPython font family wx.DECORATIVE defaults to Impact 1. For a more suitable UI font, this is changed to wx.DEFAULT.

On modern macOS and Windows systems, this is expected to have minimal impact (no pun intended), as wx.DECORATIVE already seems to be equivalent to wx.DEFAULT on both platforms 23.

Even with its original intent, the 'decorative' font family is not a good match for the UI, as it corresponds to the fantasy font family in CSS, that mostly includes gimmicky fonts like Papyrus or Jokerman 4.

Before (Impact)
Before
After (Noto Sans)
After

Resolves #1172

Footnotes

  1. https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/blob/18da5b8269706472f6c0fa09dcbae605a477da19/src/unix/fontutil.cpp#L274-L277

  2. https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/blob/18da5b8269706472f6c0fa09dcbae605a477da19/src/osx/carbon/font.cpp#L218-L220

  3. https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/issues/24178

  4. https://web.archive.org/web/20130126125901/http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-Fantasy.shtml

On Unix systems, the wxWidgets / wxPython font family `wx.DECORATIVE`
defaults to Impact [^1]. For a more suitable UI font, this is changed to
`wx.DEFAULT`.

On modern macOS and Windows systems, this is expected to have minimal
impact (no pun intended), as `wx.DECORATIVE` already seems to be
equivalent to `wx.DEFAULT` on both platforms [^2][^3].

Even with its original intent, the 'decorative' font family is not a
good match for the UI, as it corresponds to the `fantasy` font family in
CSS, that mostly includes gimmicky fonts like Papyrus or Jokerman [^4].

[^1]: https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/blob/18da5b8269706472f6c0fa09dcbae605a477da19/src/unix/fontutil.cpp#L274-L277
[^2]: https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/blob/18da5b8269706472f6c0fa09dcbae605a477da19/src/osx/carbon/font.cpp#L218-L220
[^3]: wxWidgets/wxWidgets#24178
[^4]: https://web.archive.org/web/20130126125901/http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-Fantasy.shtml
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CLAassistant commented Jun 17, 2025

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All committers have signed the CLA.

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Looks good

@gentlegiantJGC gentlegiantJGC merged commit 4889915 into Amulet-Team:0.10 Jun 18, 2025
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@gwuen gwuen deleted the improv-font-family-usage branch June 18, 2025 09:43
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[Feature Request] Consider using a different font family for the menu

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