Windows XP question -- Increase font size in applications and desk top icons

[j***@astraweb.com]

In Windows XP, (Yes, I know this is a Win 7 group)
I need to make the text larger in the applications and also the icon text.
I did increase the icon size but do not know how to increase the application and icon text size,

Any help?

[R.Wieser]

Jack,

Post by j***@astraweb.com
I need to make the text larger in the applications and also the icon text.

Did you try rightclick the desktop - properties - Appearance - Font size ?

Ah yes, that is in classic mode. No idea where its done in standard mode
I'm afraid.

Post by j***@astraweb.com
In Windows XP, (Yes, I know this is a Win 7 group)

You do know that there still is a "windows-xp" newsgroup ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

[j***@astraweb.com]

Post by R.Wieser
Jack,

Post by j***@astraweb.com
I need to make the text larger in the applications and also the icon text.

Did you try rightclick the desktop - properties - Appearance - Font size ?
Ah yes, that is in classic mode. No idea where its done in standard mode
I'm afraid.

Post by j***@astraweb.com
In Windows XP, (Yes, I know this is a Win 7 group)

You do know that there still is a "windows-xp" newsgroup ?
Regards,
Rudy Wieser

I tried the DPI change through "appearance" and it wanted a disk and admin priveldges.
I have no idea where i might have that disk if i still do have it since i have been on Win 7 for a
decade this fall.
There is a close copy of my message in the windowsxp group, but the group appears dead which is why i
asked here.

[R.Wieser]

Jack,

Post by j***@astraweb.com
I tried the DPI change through "appearance" and it wanted a disk and admin priveldges.
I have no idea where i might have that disk if i still do have it since
i have been on Win 7 for a decade this fall.

Not a disk. You need to log in as an admin. With what username and
password ? The ones you made the account with ofcourse. :-) (IOW, thats
not something I or anyone can help you with).

Post by j***@astraweb.com
There is a close copy of my message in the windowsxp group, but the
group appears dead which is why i asked here.

I do not see your post in alt.comp.os.windows-xp. The last post I see there
is "looking for an OCR solution" (240111).

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

[Ed Cryer]

Post by j***@astraweb.com
In Windows XP, (Yes, I know this is a Win 7 group)
I need to make the text larger in the applications and also the icon text.
I did increase the icon size but do not know how to increase the application and icon text size,
Any help?

Windows Start > Settings > Ease of Access.
You'll find quite a selection of things in there.

Ed

[j***@astraweb.com]

Post by Ed Cryer

Post by j***@astraweb.com
In Windows XP, (Yes, I know this is a Win 7 group)
I need to make the text larger in the applications and also the icon text.
I did increase the icon size but do not know how to increase the application and icon text size,
Any help?

Windows Start > Settings > Ease of Access.
You'll find quite a selection of things in there.
Ed

Thanks. I will check it out.

[Newyana2]

<***@astraweb.com> wrote

| >Windows Start > Settings > Ease of Access.
| >You'll find quite a selection of things in there.
| >
| >Ed
|
| Thanks. I will check it out.
|
Good luck with that. Ed is thinking of Win10. Ease of
Access is a UWP/RT/Metro applet in Windows 10. For
reasons unknown, Microsoft repeated the Control Panel
functions in a different arrangement through Metro
applets. None of that is on XP.

[Ed Cryer]

Post by Newyana2
| >Windows Start > Settings > Ease of Access.
| >You'll find quite a selection of things in there.
| >
| >Ed
|
| Thanks. I will check it out.
|
Good luck with that. Ed is thinking of Win10. Ease of
Access is a UWP/RT/Metro applet in Windows 10. For
reasons unknown, Microsoft repeated the Control Panel
functions in a different arrangement through Metro
applets. None of that is on XP.

My Win7 has Ease of Access centre, accessible from Control Panel/ Make
the computer easier to see/ Make things on the screen larger/ Change the
size of text and icons.

Ed

[Newyana2]

"Ed Cryer" <***@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote

| My Win7 has Ease of Access centre, accessible from Control Panel/ Make
| the computer easier to see/ Make things on the screen larger/ Change the
| size of text and icons.
|

I never noticed that before. At any rate, it's not on XP.
I'm guessing the Win7 version is just an accessibility
presentation of what's on XP. It's rarely used and generally
not a good idea.

I ran across it many years ago writing software. I'd never
heard of anyone actually changing text size. But it came up
in a programming discussion and I realized that Windows didn't
actually handle it. The setting would make all the label text in
my program window bigger, but leave everything else the same,
so that text often got snipped. I learned that in order to
accommodate anyone using that setting I had to leave extra
space on all labels.

For example, if I had a button with text under it that said,
"Browse for File", I'd have to make sure there was plenty of
room for the text to get bigger. Long story short, the setting
works but may cause surprises in some software windows.

[Ed Cryer]

Post by Newyana2
| My Win7 has Ease of Access centre, accessible from Control Panel/ Make
| the computer easier to see/ Make things on the screen larger/ Change the
| size of text and icons.
|
I never noticed that before. At any rate, it's not on XP.
I'm guessing the Win7 version is just an accessibility
presentation of what's on XP. It's rarely used and generally
not a good idea.
I ran across it many years ago writing software. I'd never
heard of anyone actually changing text size. But it came up
in a programming discussion and I realized that Windows didn't
actually handle it. The setting would make all the label text in
my program window bigger, but leave everything else the same,
so that text often got snipped. I learned that in order to
accommodate anyone using that setting I had to leave extra
space on all labels.
For example, if I had a button with text under it that said,
"Browse for File", I'd have to make sure there was plenty of
room for the text to get bigger. Long story short, the setting
works but may cause surprises in some software windows.

I have an ages-old text file in my Personal folder that follows me from
computer to computer.
It's called "Systray icon size"; and it contains
Icon = 20
Menu = 18
The days when Windows had an Advanced settings list. Was it Win7 or
something before or after?

Ed

[J. P. Gilliver]

Post by Ed Cryer

Post by Newyana2
| My Win7 has Ease of Access centre, accessible from Control Panel/
|Make
| the computer easier to see/ Make things on the screen larger/ Change the
| size of text and icons.
|
I never noticed that before. At any rate, it's not on XP.
I'm guessing the Win7 version is just an accessibility
presentation of what's on XP. It's rarely used and generally
not a good idea.
I ran across it many years ago writing software. I'd never
heard of anyone actually changing text size. But it came up
in a programming discussion and I realized that Windows didn't
actually handle it. The setting would make all the label text in
my program window bigger, but leave everything else the same,
so that text often got snipped. I learned that in order to
accommodate anyone using that setting I had to leave extra
space on all labels.
For example, if I had a button with text under it that said,
"Browse for File", I'd have to make sure there was plenty of
room for the text to get bigger. Long story short, the setting
works but may cause surprises in some software windows.

I have an ages-old text file in my Personal folder that follows me from
computer to computer.
It's called "Systray icon size"; and it contains
Icon = 20
Menu = 18
The days when Windows had an Advanced settings list. Was it Win7 or
something before or after?
Ed

The word "Advanced" always makes me smile, because of its appearance in
the transition from (IIRR) Windows 95 to 98. The dialog box that let you
set how various things looked - mostly colours, but also things like
border widths, and font sizes and types - was there under '95; under
'98, the same route got you to a more limited version, but it had an
"Advanced" button, which got you to more or less the same box as before.
It was as if someone said "these newbies, we won't have them changing
the appearance all the time - only we 'advanced' folk should have access
to what everyone did before."

(The same box is there under 7, but even harder to find - let me see:
right-click on desktop background, Appearance Color, Advanced appearance
settings... . (And I think then some of them don't work - or, worse,
have odd effects - if you're using an Aero theme.)

[Newyana2]

"J. P. Gilliver" <***@255soft.uk> wrote

| It was as if someone said "these newbies, we won't have them changing
| the appearance all the time - only we 'advanced' folk should have access
| to what everyone did before."
|
That's exactly it. Inexperienced people are intimidated
by the Advanced button. MS know that. That's why IE
cookie settings, for example, were hidden behind an
Advanced button -- to makre sure no one disables cookies.

[Newyana2]

"Ed Cryer" <***@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote

|
| I have an ages-old text file in my Personal folder that follows me from
| computer to computer.
| It's called "Systray icon size"; and it contains
| Icon = 20
| Menu = 18
| The days when Windows had an Advanced settings list. Was it Win7 or
| something before or after?
|
I've never heard of that. I don't remember ever
seeing such settings in Control Panel. They've always
been in the Registry:

HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

An old hack to make Exlplorer see custom icon changes was
to change the icon size, force an Explorer refresh, then change
it back and do the same.

The API function GetSystemMetrics has an option to retrieve
icon size or small icon size. But I don't know offhand where
it gets the small size, and I don't know of any function to
set small icon size.

It looks like what you have are hex values. 32 and 24. But
I don't know where they apply.

Recently I've been exploring a move to Win10. I tried changing
some windows metrics colors by hand in the Registry because
Win10 display didn't give me access to complete control and I
wanted more obvious distinction between active window title bar
and inactive title bar. The settings are still there, but Explorer
doesn't seem to use them. I'm not sure. The Softies have always
had perverse control issues, constantly breaking hacks for no
discernable reason. So it's sometimes hard to say how things work,
or how they're supposed to work. And I've just begun to explore
Win10 in earnest.

[j***@astraweb.com]

Post by Newyana2
| My Win7 has Ease of Access centre, accessible from Control Panel/ Make
| the computer easier to see/ Make things on the screen larger/ Change the
| size of text and icons.
|
I never noticed that before. At any rate, it's not on XP.
I'm guessing the Win7 version is just an accessibility
presentation of what's on XP. It's rarely used and generally
not a good idea.
I ran across it many years ago writing software. I'd never
heard of anyone actually changing text size. But it came up
in a programming discussion and I realized that Windows didn't
actually handle it. The setting would make all the label text in
my program window bigger, but leave everything else the same,
so that text often got snipped. I learned that in order to
accommodate anyone using that setting I had to leave extra
space on all labels.
For example, if I had a button with text under it that said,
"Browse for File", I'd have to make sure there was plenty of
room for the text to get bigger. Long story short, the setting
works but may cause surprises in some software windows.

Not a surprise when you are expecting that to happen at times. .

If you can't infer what the text says, and need to know, you can copy it from the container and paste it
as a search argument (for example) and the copy function will usually get the whole line, whether it is
displayed on the terminal or not.

jim

[Newyana2]

<***@astraweb.com> wrote

| I need to make the text larger in the applications and also the icon text.
| I did increase the icon size but do not know how to increase the
application and icon text size,
|

Go into Display settings. You should find a DPI setting.
Normal is 96. Large, for people with vision problems, is 120.
You can also try changing font size in Display -> Appearance.
But that's not a great approach. Effects will vary in software.
In some cases you may have labels chopped off because
they don't fit.

A better approach is to adjust display resolution. For
example, on my laptop I had 1920x1080. Everything was
too small. I changed it to 1600x900. The effect will vary
depending on the hardware. In my case it looks good.
Try to pick a resolution with the same w/h ratio. If you
don't then the screen may show a black bar or, worse,
it may distort items.

[Mark Lloyd]

On 3/14/24 12:43, Newyana2 wrote:

[snip]

Post by Newyana2
A better approach is to adjust display resolution. For
example, on my laptop I had 1920x1080. Everything was
too small. I changed it to 1600x900. The effect will vary
depending on the hardware. In my case it looks good.
Try to pick a resolution with the same w/h ratio. If you
don't then the screen may show a black bar or, worse,
it may distort items.

That's what I did on my small (Lenovo) laptop. It supports 1920x1080 but
the text is hard to read.

[J. P. Gilliver]

Post by Mark Lloyd
[snip]

Post by Newyana2
A better approach is to adjust display resolution. For
example, on my laptop I had 1920x1080. Everything was
too small. I changed it to 1600x900. The effect will vary
depending on the hardware. In my case it looks good.
Try to pick a resolution with the same w/h ratio. If you
don't then the screen may show a black bar or, worse,
it may distort items.

That's what I did on my small (Lenovo) laptop. It supports 1920x1080
but the text is hard to read.

As well as choosing the right aspect ratio, ideally you should choose a
factor of the display's natural resolution, otherwise most of the
generated pixels will be across two or more real pixels; however, that's
rarely possible. (E. g. for a 1920×1080, you'd have to choose 960×540,
which even if offered by the graphics card, would be a bit small for
Windows 7 or later, which assume larger.)

[Newyana2]

"J. P. Gilliver" <***@255soft.uk> wrote

| As well as choosing the right aspect ratio, ideally you should choose a
| factor of the display's natural resolution, otherwise most of the
| generated pixels will be across two or more real pixels

People often say that. I've found that it varies. On my laptop,
1920 and 1600 both look very good. Maybe it depends on the age
and type of monitor.

[j***@astraweb.com]

Post by J. P. Gilliver

Post by Mark Lloyd
[snip]

Post by Newyana2
A better approach is to adjust display resolution. For
example, on my laptop I had 1920x1080. Everything was
too small. I changed it to 1600x900. The effect will vary
depending on the hardware. In my case it looks good.
Try to pick a resolution with the same w/h ratio. If you
don't then the screen may show a black bar or, worse,
it may distort items.

That's what I did on my small (Lenovo) laptop. It supports 1920x1080
but the text is hard to read.

As well as choosing the right aspect ratio, ideally you should choose a
factor of the display's natural resolution, otherwise most of the
generated pixels will be across two or more real pixels; however, that's
rarely possible. (E. g. for a 1920×1080, you'd have to choose 960×540,
which even if offered by the graphics card, would be a bit small for
Windows 7 or later, which assume larger.)

Thanks. 1280 x 800 seems to work fine -- and according to a note (masquerading as a folder name) that
is what i had it at previously.

jack

[j***@astraweb.com]

Post by Mark Lloyd
[snip]

Post by Newyana2
A better approach is to adjust display resolution. For
example, on my laptop I had 1920x1080. Everything was
too small. I changed it to 1600x900. The effect will vary
depending on the hardware. In my case it looks good.
Try to pick a resolution with the same w/h ratio. If you
don't then the screen may show a black bar or, worse,
it may distort items.

That's what I did on my small (Lenovo) laptop. It supports 1920x1080 but
the text is hard to read.

I'll just have to remember to move the icons in towards the center enough that they don't get moved off
of the screen.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Post by j***@astraweb.com
I'll just have to remember to move the icons in towards the center enough that they don't get moved off
of the screen.

Yes, don't forget that. It could be harder to fix it afterward.

[j***@astraweb.com]

Post by Newyana2
| I need to make the text larger in the applications and also the icon text.
| I did increase the icon size but do not know how to increase the
application and icon text size,
|
Go into Display settings. You should find a DPI setting.
Normal is 96. Large, for people with vision problems, is 120.
You can also try changing font size in Display -> Appearance.
But that's not a great approach. Effects will vary in software.
In some cases you may have labels chopped off because
they don't fit.
A better approach is to adjust display resolution. For
example, on my laptop I had 1920x1080. Everything was
too small. I changed it to 1600x900. The effect will vary
depending on the hardware. In my case it looks good.
Try to pick a resolution with the same w/h ratio. If you
don't then the screen may show a black bar or, worse,
it may distort items.

Great ideas. I changed it form my previous 1280 x 800 (same aspect ratio ) for a reason. i might need
to go back. Oh yeah....I just remembered the reason -- Picasa does screenshots but takes the area
considered "full screen" based on the actual machine native resolution. (I just made an executive
decision --- it's not worth the hassle of squinting to read the text.)

[Newyana2]

<***@astraweb.com> wrote

| Picasa does screenshots but takes the area
| considered "full screen" based on the actual machine native resolution.

Very strange. I've never ued Picasa, but as you may know,
you can take screenshots by just pressing the PrtScr key, which
puts the image on the Clipboard.

[J. P. Gilliver]

Post by Newyana2
| Picasa does screenshots but takes the area
| considered "full screen" based on the actual machine native resolution.
Very strange. I've never ued Picasa, but as you may know,
you can take screenshots by just pressing the PrtScr key, which
puts the image on the Clipboard.

And, less well-known, Alt and PrtScr captures just the currently-active
window.

[j***@astraweb.com]

Post by Newyana2
| Picasa does screenshots but takes the area
| considered "full screen" based on the actual machine native resolution.
Very strange. I've never ued Picasa,

Picasa was developed over a decade ago and using the hardware resolution may have been a programming
shortcut of efficiency that prevented having to look up the settings for the terminal.

Post by Newyana2
but as you may know,
you can take screenshots by just pressing the PrtScr key, which
puts the image on the Clipboard.

The difference here is that I started using this facility when disk space was still meaningful and
prtscrn gives a .bmp where picasa optioned the screenshot as a .jpg (or .png) -- or probably more to the
point, i come from a time when the "upgrade" hard disk to my 386 was 128 meg instead of 80 meg. -- and
old habits die hard (like saving space).
But, otherwise, I use alt+Prtscr a lot for other informal projects.

jim

[J. P. Gilliver]

In message <***@4ax.com> at Fri, 15 Mar
2024 07:20:05, ***@astraweb.com writes
[]

Post by j***@astraweb.com
The difference here is that I started using this facility when disk
space was still meaningful and
prtscrn gives a .bmp where picasa optioned the screenshot as a .jpg (or
.png) -- or probably more to the
point, i come from a time when the "upgrade" hard disk to my 386 was
128 meg instead of 80 meg. -- and
old habits die hard (like saving space).
But, otherwise, I use alt+Prtscr a lot for other informal projects.
jim

To be strictly accurate, PrtScn (and Alt-PrtScn) give you a raw image in
the clipboard; it's only what you then paste it into to save that
decides what it's to be saved as. (I usually paste it into IrfanView,
and then usually save it as a JPEG or GIF - usually GIF if I'm going to
annotate it with text, ovals, and arrows, which is the usual reason I'm
taking screenshots.) If you pasted it into Paint, then that used to only
be able to save as bitmap, but the version of Paint in 7 has options.

[Paul]

[]

Post by j***@astraweb.com
The difference here is that I started using this facility when disk space was still meaningful and
prtscrn gives a .bmp where picasa optioned the screenshot as a .jpg (or .png) -- or probably more to the
point, i come from a time when the "upgrade" hard disk to my 386 was 128 meg instead of 80 meg. -- and
old habits die hard (like saving space).
But, otherwise, I use alt+Prtscr a lot for other informal projects.
jim

To be strictly accurate, PrtScn (and Alt-PrtScn) give you a raw image in the clipboard; it's only what you then paste it into to save that decides what it's to be saved as. (I usually paste it into IrfanView, and then usually save it as a JPEG or GIF - usually GIF if I'm going to annotate it with text, ovals, and arrows, which is the usual reason I'm taking screenshots.) If you pasted it into Paint, then that used to only be able to save as bitmap, but the version of Paint in 7 has options.

It's a system provided function.

The various OSes have clipboard systems, capable of
carrying one or more data types or representations.

The graphics system is in "planes" and PrtScn only
captures one of the planes. Other tools are needed
to capture the 3D screen of a computer game.

FRAPS was the champ at that, and what it was doing,
was intercepting the calls to the graphics system,
using an injection DLL. But if you ran the FRAPS
installer while an AV like Kaspersky was running,
there would be a knife fight (the injection DLL
could get installed in a couple hundred places on
a busy machine, and AV programs don't like that).

FRAPS could capture ordinary 2D desktop or 3D game
frames. It is not compatible with W8 or W10 or W11 and
the person writing the code gave up on it. This is
all related to the graphics subsystems being made
inaccessible to programmable content (PVP and friends).
Win7 was the last OS, open to such activity. At around
the same time, VGA ports on video cards, were removed.
And before that, YPrPb was removed (three coax outputs),
capable of a lot more than 640x480.

Paul