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Bullets and tiny text
Authored by: interlard on Nov 16, '05 08:43:56AM

Great hint. Now how to I make 10 point text (which is readable for Windows users) readable by me in Mail when I'm either reading or writing emails? I normally write emails in plain text so the displayed font is set by me to be readable, then I switch to rich text to add the formatting. A real pain.

We need a zoom function, or just a way to increase the displayed size of text on a Mac. With screen resolutions increasing, text on Macs is getting smaller and smaller. When will the madness end??

Another thing: the hint mentions using rich text to get bullets. I don't see how Mail supports bullets, which I find really annoying. What's the trick?



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when reading 10pt text: use [command]-+...
Authored by: nick on Nov 16, '05 09:04:55AM

...in the message-window. it does the zoom-trick for me.

is this a hint on its own? but i'm pretty shure one of the 8034 hints covers this already.

n.



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Sorry, it doesn't help me
Authored by: interlard on Nov 16, '05 11:06:19AM

Thanks for the tip (everyone) but it doesn't help me when I'm writing emails. I know, I should have said this in the original message but I'm just a very flawed person. :-)

Anyway, tips on tiny text are still appreciated.

Or these mysterious bullets.



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Bullets and tiny text
Authored by: greed on Nov 16, '05 09:12:50AM

There's a problem with point sizes from Windows.

The problem is, Windows doesn't use point sizes. Anytime a font size is specified as "points", Windows interprets it as "pixels".

Every other system currently in use treats "points" as "1/72 of an inch", which is ever so slightly wrong, but close enough for practical use. The display resolution (pixels-per-inch) is then used to convert points to pixels. You can't use the Windows completely incorrect definition of "points" without messing everything else up. I, personally, don't think design bugs should be copied into other systems.

The fix is, as far as I'm concerned, to ignore absolute point sizes and obey only relative sizes from stylesheets and the like. (So, font-size: 10pt or 10px is ignored, but font-size: 1.5em, or 150%, and so on are accepted.) And implement Minimum Font Size like Mozilla and friends have had for a bit now, and has been added to the latest Safari.

For practical use, I hit Cmd-Option-P (I think) to get the Plain Text alternative. If there isn't a Plain Text alternative, and I really can't read it, I tell the sender to re-send without messing with the font size.

Hmmm, maybe I can figure out how to make the Mozilla stylesheet parser Do What I Want....



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Bullets and tiny text
Authored by: lar3ry on Nov 16, '05 10:56:43AM

Technically, font sizes (height) shouldn't be specified in "em" units, since those units measure width. Instead, use "ex" to specify height. ("1.5ex" means 150% the height of the base font.)

CSS allows the use of silly units for any measurement, which gets confusing. The reason, though, is for uniformity: setting a margin top, bottom, width, and height all at "1.5em" would describe a uniform margin around a block.

[sigh]



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Bullets and tiny text
Authored by: AndySpry on Nov 16, '05 10:10:13AM

I use [Command]-+ (increase font size) and [Command]-- (decrease font size) when I have my hands on the keyboard. But most often when using Mail.app, I am moving around opening and closing messages with the mouse.

To get the decrease/increase font size into Mail.app's reader window, open any e-mail message and select View->Customize Toobar and put the button with the little and big "A" onto the toolbar. This gives you the option of changing the font size with the mouse.

You can also do this on the Mail.app's main window and on the compose message window. They have separate toolbar configurations.

The first thing I do when upgrading OS X across major versions is update my Mail.app tool bars to include the set of actions that maximize my e-mail workflow.

My biggest gripe with Mail.app is that there is no action (command or button) to step to the next unread message in a mailbox. You can get this action by typing [Command]-w to close the current message, pressing the Up or Down arrow to go to the next unread message in the mailbox (depending on how you sort your mail), then pressing return. I'd like a single keystroke or button press for this action.



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Bullets and tiny text
Authored by: Unsoluble on Nov 16, '05 02:42:34PM
If you view your mail in the mail pane instead of opening them up into their own windows, you can just hit the arrow keys to cycle through messages...

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Bullets and tiny text
Authored by: timgaden on Nov 16, '05 06:08:43PM
You could try this tip, which shows you how to set a minimum font size for displaying HTML messages.

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Bullets and tiny text
Authored by: interlard on Nov 17, '05 09:50:35PM

timgaden, I LOVE YOU. This is freaking perfect! Now I can read everyone's emails, AND my own. I can't believe I had to apply a hack just to make email easy to read. Apple, what are you THINKING??

Time, I'm going to be really helpful to 10 people tomorrow. They in turn will be really really nice to 10 other people. And so on. Eventually the wave of goodwill should get back to you. Oh wait, I live in New York...it won't get far.

OK, so how do I get bullets in emails? Where's the toolbar button for that? C'mon Apple, M$ gave us this DECADES ago. ;-)



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Bullets
Authored by: ottonomy on Nov 17, '05 11:30:59PM

I assume you want to do something more sophisticated with bullets in your emails than simply inserting bullet characters by typing option-8. But in case you're not...



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Bullets
Authored by: stamaknox on Nov 23, '05 08:57:55PM

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I have been trying to figure out how to avoid cut and paste for bullets in mail. A real help.

One thing I hope someone can help with --- when I use the option/8 combo, the font style "jumps" to monaco. I noticed it does this with any option key combo when I am typing an email. I can highlight the text and revert back to my preferred font (which obviously is not monaco) but this makes it more time consuming. I use bullets alot. Any ideas on why -- &/or how to stop this "reverse default setting"?

---
Stamaknox



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Tiny text
Authored by: narya on Dec 08, '05 03:36:42AM

Tim, you made my day! Thank you!

Alexander.



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