Allow selecting different font sizes

[Stampede]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I have a 4k monitor and I have to lean really close to be able to read the text.

Describe the solution you'd like
Add an option to choose font size in the preferences. Alternatively, keyboard shortcut to grow or shrink the font. (Ctrl + or Ctrl -Mousewheel)

Additional context
I am running your Flatpak and my system is running KDE. I'm attaching a screenshot of the window when it is maximized.

And unrelated to my issue, this is the most user-friendly way to try out LLMs and still use CUDA on GPUs. Thanks so much for making this!

[Jeffser]

thanks for the suggestion, is this a problem you have with Adwaita (Gnome) apps or just Alpaca?

You see, as far as I know there isn't a direct way of controlling the font size of GTK apps, but there might be a way for you to change it on your system

[ihatemakinganaccount]

@Stampede @Jeffser yea this is controlled by Gnome/Gtk. When not using Gnome, one can use commands like this to change font size:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name 'Monospace 11'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name 'Sans 11'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name 'Sans 11'

It should also be settable in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini (or gtk-4.0) but running those commands didn't change these inis, so idk

[jdamboeck]

Arent there 2 different text sizes in Gnome? Interface and document text size? I have document text size set to 16 and interface to 14. Would be great if you could use the document text size for text and interface for the rest.

[ihatemakinganaccount]

@jdamboeck there are. In the meantime I figured out that they're set in dconf: /org/gnome/desktop/interface/font-name and document-font-name.

Alpaca font size is affected by font-name. But as @Jeffser says, this is how the Adwaita toolkit or whatever does it apparently.

Gawd I hate Gnome. It's all groovy when you stick to defaults, but as soon as you dare to think about changing anything, it throws all kinds of obstacles your way, and that goes for the apps that just use the libs and toolkits too.

[jdamboeck]

Yeah no it is not that simple. Plenty libadwaita apps offer different font sizes for different elements or for accessibility reasons (Apostrophe fe.) libadwaita is somehow flexible and gnome hid guidelines should not be a blocker for an option that helps users to access your program.

In a tool that deals with mostly text, i would think that the process of reading and writing text should be accessible to all.

Edit: libadwaita also should have relative font sizes.

@ihatemakinganaccount I find the gnome bashing a bit easy. It gets old. The same arguments that miss the point. Sure. Call it Obstacles. Or you could call it a design goal with rules and guidelines to achieve it. But this discussion is a bit off-topic.

[Jeffser]

Just so we are all clear on how Adwaita and GTK4 works, they do let me change the font and it's size, both globally and per widget with css classes.

Now, the fact that I could do it doesn't mean I should, Alpaca is being considered for Gnome Circle at the moment and it has to adhere to the Gnome HIG.

What I could do is do a ctrl+scroll zoom feature for the chat section of the app, but I won't make it possible to change the font globally, the way that's done is with the dconf.

[Jeffser]

btw I tried making the chats use the document font, as far as I can see there isn't a way of doing that directly, I don't even know where it's actually used currently

[Jeffser]

Oh yeah I forgot to tell you guys about this package xdg-desktop-portal-gtk it manages the scale of gtk apps. that may or may not fix the issue.

[jdamboeck]

So like in Console just with an option to scale relative. Sounds good to me.

[CodingKoalaGeneral]

Oh yeah I forgot to tell you guys about this package xdg-desktop-portal-gtk it manages the scale of gtk apps. that may or may not fix the issue.

The package was already installed but i have the same scaling issue
as mentioned this only happens when the window is maximized.