Allow user to choose font and font size

[Katzen-Gott]

It would be cool if user could choose fonts for conversations (and even 20% cooler if telegram would use system-default fonts)

[solf]

Please add this... current font looks awful and is mostly unusable when Font Smoothing is off.

[AlexanderBelokon]

👍 without monospaced fonts it's really impossible to use for programming-related discussions

[matteodellamico]

Yes, please. The font looks horrible here (Ubuntu 14.10).

[marco-solare]

what about a textual prefix like ` or a mode triggered by a button to temporarily switch to a monospaced font for sending code (related) stuff?

[iivmok]

👍 Please oh please.

[Konekokonut]

Oh please oh please.

[dnmr]

Yes please.

[deconstruction]

Much needed. Very important.

[mr-love]

The tilde ~ looks like a dash... one of many small gripes about the default font so 👍

[telegramdesktop]

@mark-love It is not anymore in the latest dev release :) Will be in the stable in a week or two.

[neesti]

The defulat font of "Telegram Desktop" is not nice and is also small in Persian language texts.

[Mnkai]

This feature is really important - since default font in hidpi setting is way too narrow since it's bitmap font.
Allowing user to select other font properly supporting hidpi will be more feasible.

[SafaAlfulaij]

@telegramdesktop I'd like to say something cool.
I don't know how it will affect the performance, but you are a great developer 👍
So, what if you used Noto fonts (there are many, not sure how will you package them) and detected the language/script of each character in the chat and then use the suitable font for it? 😇
Or maybe better, implement a font setting dialog to select a different font for each language/script.
Because selecting one font only can cause problems such as bad-looking characters.

[john-preston]

Ok, first attempt on font customization is out with 4.16.9 beta version.

[tamr]

Ok, first attempt on font customization is out with 4.16.9 beta version.

Great. It werks! No more exe patching required, sweet!

[Geobert]

This font doesn’t render well https://jacobxperez.github.io/atkinson-hyperlegible-pro/ (Windows)

[ilya-fedin]

@Geobert perhaps you need to enable font smoothing in system settings?

[Geobert]

@Geobert perhaps you need to enable font smoothing in system settings?

It is already enabled :)

[ilya-fedin]

@Geobert are you sure? there are multiple settings regarding it... i believe you need to enable cleartype

[ilya-fedin]

the thing here is that it's Qt who is responsible for font rendering (tdesktop just sends text via QPainter) so it's not possible to do any other than tinkering with system settings.

[Geobert]

[ilya-fedin]

@Geobert perhaps you got a Qt bug?

[Geobert]

@Geobert perhaps you got a Qt bug?

I’m on Windows, so I use the Qt shipped with Telegram I believe

[ilya-fedin]

I’m on Windows, so I use the Qt shipped with Telegram I believe

Yeah... Although I'm not sure what you wanted to say by that.

[AndydeCleyre]

Ok, first attempt on font customization is out with 4.16.9 beta version.

Is this planned for monospace as well?

[AndydeCleyre]

Is it known whether the monospace fonts will eventually be either user-selectable, or match the system's existing monospace selection? Does this issue cover that, or would a separate issue be appropriate?

[ilya-fedin]

Monospace font is whatever Qt thinks the system monospace font since a long time. Except of Windows, where Qt thinks system monospace font is Courier New so Cascadia Mono is requested explicitly.

[AndydeCleyre]

Monospace font is whatever Qt thinks the system monospace font since a long time.

Oh! Any extra steps required to get that working with the flatpak package, in KDE Plasma?

[ilya-fedin]

Oh! Any extra steps required to get that working with the flatpak package, in KDE Plasma?

Oh, afaik KDE/Qt flatpak fonts thing is in the state of lack of interest from KDE/Qt side. GNOME/gtk use their own sandbox friendly way of getting the settings while KDE/Qt uses fontconfig configs which are backward incompatible (a config made for a later fontconfig library version would break previous fontconfig library version) and so aren't sandbox-friendly.

[AndydeCleyre]

Alright, well for anyone else wondering I tried the following without success:

$ cd ~/.var/app/org.telegram.desktop/config
$ ln -s ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf

Then tried the following, also without success:

$ rm ~/.var/app/org.telegram.desktop/config/fonts.conf
$ flatpak --user override --filesystem=$HOME/.config/fontconfig/:ro
$ flatpak --user override --filesystem=$HOME/.local/share/fonts/:ro

[ilya-fedin]

Oh, looks like I gave wrong information to you. What is lacking in KDE/Qt case is font hinting and antialiasing settings (which gtk has), monospace font face is supported (stored in KDE configs). It's gtk who doesn't have monospace setting at all (exists only at gnome-terminal level which reads gnome-shell setting) and the Qt patchset changes Qt so it always gets settings from gtk (which leads Qt to read monospace font from fontconfig) as otherwise people report bugs that tdesktop is not adhering their system settings and it's the only feature complete settings backend in Qt. I'm not sure what to do in that case but changing monospace font is not planned AFAIK.

[AndydeCleyre]

OK, is this only an issue for flatpak, or also with native installations, in a KDE Plasma environment?

I had been maintaining custom build scripts for telegram on the AUR for system font support, but removed them when this font support was added. I want to know if I should try resurrecting and maintaining the custom build scripts, but won't bother if the bug only affects flatpak installations.

[ilya-fedin]

OK, is this only an issue for flatpak, or also with native installations, in a KDE Plasma environment?

Well, I'm not sure. Feel free to test.

[AndydeCleyre]

I'm not currently running Arch, but an LTS Ubuntu, so can't test non-flatpak updated Telegram Desktop at the moment. If anyone else here can tell me if monospace uses the proper font in KDE Plasma, I'd appreciate it.

[ilya-fedin]

You can try the static binary

[AndydeCleyre]

Thanks! Yes it works just fine with the static build.