Ok, Like so many things with computers it is totally obvious if you know but maddening if you don’t and no way to fix it.
So for quite some time, I have been annoyed with the Inkscape upgrade that for much of the time the text was too small for me to read so I was using a magnifying lens where I was trying to read that area only and always had to translate from millimeters, looking everywhere in setup trying to change it
So yesterday I got some of those cheap magnifying glasses at the grocery and now can read the small text much better. And now I discover this…
My problem in part was getting a new computer and second screen. One wants the most screen real estate possible to have the fewest “jaggies” on the artwork. However, then what the difference bigger the screen (in pixels) the text will be that much smaller This is not a problem in mostly text situations like this forum where the CTL+ mouse wheel takes care of that instantly, but in the graphics software the answer is not that easy, even if you can zoom the screen you are back to the real estate problem you had before. Adding the extra screen helps a lot with getting sidebars off the main screen…and the downside bites as it has to be further away. The old second screen was cheap and low rez by current standards, but the new one is the same as the former laptop so more fits on but is smaller also. Overall a good problem and the physical dimensions are bigger all around (once at a job I had a huge room size screen at work but it was still an old tv so the screen was 640x480 and the pixels each so huge I had to put the screen across the room to use it)
There’s a thing called lens view, it lets you magnify what’s directly under the mouse pointer. This would let you keep your extra real estate and do “spot zooms” where you need it. It’s basically a digital magnifying glass.
That being said since you already have a magnifying glass, that might be just as convenient?
The problem I have with Inkscape is the measurement tool produces numbers so tiny that I struggle even with a magnifying glass. I cannot find any settings that work to enlarge the text.
That’s exactly what the setting @rbtdanforth pointed out changes. You can set the measurement tool text size. It’s a nice trick, I never noticed it before either.
Yeah and it works terribly if you just want to scale some part of the UI, like the text in the measurement tool. Thankfully Inkscape seems to have realized this
Unfortunately, until I found what was sitting there in front of me, If I zoomed close it would very properly reset the font to what it said and made the font small again
I had tried most of the other suggestions. I zoom in and out as a standard practice. It was only Inkscape that kept making the font tiny when I zoomed in. Thank you all, for allowing me to not feel like such an idiot for not seeing what was there in front of me.
damn, sorry about that.
This is not a problem in mostly text situations like this forum where the CTL+ mouse wheel takes care of that instantly, but in the graphics software the answer is not that easy, even if you can zoom the screen you are back to the real estate problem you had before. Adding the extra screen helps a lot with getting sidebars off the main screen…and the downside bites as it has to be further away. The old second screen was cheap and low rez by current standards, but the new one is the same as the former laptop so more fits on but is smaller also. Overall a good problem and the physical dimensions are bigger all around (once at a job I had a huge room size screen at work but it was still an old tv so the screen was 640x480 and the pixels each so huge I had to put the screen across the room to use it)
