Casual Font

[Coop47]

Hi Arlo -

Thanks for your continuing efforts to improve Set List Maker! Is there any chance you could bring back the casual font? I've gotten pretty comfortable with it and have a hard time reading the new options.

Thanks,
Coop

[arlo]

I don't think so ... it doesn't fit into the new choice of combinations of serif/sans-serif and monospace/proportional. I'd like to hear if you like one of the other fonts more after spending some more time with it.

[Coop47]

Okay, will do. Thanks for the reply.

[dcraftfrombr]

I've got to agree. The Casual font just "looks better". Easier on the eyes.
Monospaced fonts will never do for me because they don't allow as much text to be read.
And as any professional printer will tell you - proportional fonts are much easier to read.
And changing the fonts change the alignment of the chords with lyrics.
Is there no way you can keep Casual?

[arlo]

Surely a professional printer wouldn't advocate for using the casual font, which is similar to Comic Sans:

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/127/274/1fde3_COMIC-SANS.jpg

I agree that proportional fonts are easier to read and more space efficient, but I don't support aligning chords with lyrics with proportional fonts. You would either need to use a monospace font, of which there are now two choices, or enter your chords separately in the Chords field, which if you space them like a chord chart conveys more info than the chords-over-lyrics approach.

[dcraftfrombr]

I do agree that maybe Casual isn't the best choice, but we did not have many choices. Which begs the question, what is the reason that you offer so few fonts? The reason you have given us to remove the Casual font is that it does not fit in with the grand scheme of things. What's the harm in leaving Casual available. In fact could we have the option to choose a different font for different databases? That way I could use a different font for a new database but leave the old ones alone.

I'm not sure how others do it, but I have always used GuitarTapp app to find chord charts and email them to myself. The email puts the chart as an attachment and if you open it up on a computer, the font used is Consolas 18 pt bold (a proportional spaced font). All the chords line up and it looks good. If I open it on my iPad, I am not sure if it is using the same font, but everything lines up perfectly. I then copy the  text into SLM and have to spend a lot of time making the chords align. I've attached one of the files.

So my wish list would be to be able to use a good looking proportional spaced font and whatever app I use then allow SLM to retain whatever formatting GuitarTapp or any other app uses. Or even if I just use Safari to search the Internet for chords, usually what comes up is a proportional spaced font but it looks right. 

As always, let me be the first to say that you have a GREAT program. Even if you make us switch to different fonts, I am still going to keep using SLM. I don't see how I would survive without it. So my suggestions are simply wishes on my part.

Thanks,
Dale
*************** correction
I'm apparently wrong, the consolas font IS a monospaced font, so that's why everything lines up. My mistake. For some reason, it just looks better to me than the fonts you offer. I opened the file on my Android phone and it definitely looked different (not as good) but everything lined up. So maybe I can get used to one of the monspaced fonts, although if you could allow us to keep our old charts using a different font so that I would not have to change them, that would be super.

[arlo]

what is the reason that you offer so few fonts?

iOS and Android don't come with many built-in fonts. I can license third-party fonts and package them with the apps, but then the question becomes, what would be the benefit of offering additional fonts? I don't see much value in getting creative with unusual fonts in your lyrics display, and I don't want to get into subjective debates about which flavor of Helvetica looks better.

To be frank, one reason for removing the Casual font is that it looks embarrassingly amateurish. I should have never included it, but it goes back to the earliest days of Set List Maker when I didn't anticipate having the large audience that my apps enjoy now. At this point it conflicts too much with the established and professional image I want my apps to have. Another reason is that it didn't handle bold and italic very well.

I think the real issue here is that if you use spaces or ChordPro formatting to align chords with lyrics, the spacing shifts if you change from one proportional font to another. This is why I have never supported using proportional fonts when aligning chords, and why the Monospace font has been the default font for new accounts for a long time. This is also why I think adding a second monospace font is a great trade-off for removing the Casual font, because now you can switch between a serif and sans-serif option without altering the chord spacing. However, this does require that you align your chords using a monospace font to begin with.

You could turn on Help > Utilities > Use Old Interface to temporarily revert to the old font choices, but this option should only be used if you need time to adjust to the changes, and will eventually go away.

Aligning chords with proportional fonts is on my wish list.

[dcraftfrombr]

I tried to turn on Use Old Interface under the Help, Utilities and although it shows as being on... I don't see the Casual font available> what am I doing wrong?

If I switch to a monospaced font, all of my charts are really screwed up. If I have to switch, it's going to be a long process to correct. If there was any way to try to reposition the chords automatically when switching between a proportional font and a monospaced font, please add that to my wish list. Again, if we could have one database have a different font from another, that would help as I could create a copy of one of my databases and then slowly change the chord alignment. Until I get them changed, I could use the original database.

If I choose Proportional, Serif font, then my charts are close, so if I can't get back Casual for now, that's what I will have to select. An interesting thought came to me, I wonder how it would look if we could have the chords in a sans-serif font but the lyrics in a serif font. The Serfi font looks easier to read, but for some reason the chords look better with a sans-serif font.

I know I'm being a pain and I apologize for it.

Thanks,
Dale

[arlo]

If you turn on Use Old Interface, the casual font still won't appear among the settings, but if you select Monospace - Serif it will actually display with the old font.

You're correct that selecting one of the other proportional fonts will give a pretty good match in spacing with the defunct casual font. I should have mentioned that earlier.

You can have different settings in each database.