Zoom should not be associated with a file

[Garrett-R]

Currently, the zoom level in the editor is not a global zoom level or even a panel zoom level, but rather each zoom level is associated with a file.

Say you have 10 tabs open you're working with. And you decide you'd like bigger font, so you hit Ctrl+ a few times, but then you switch files and suddenly the font is small again. You have to do this for all 10 files.

I think the zoom level should be stored for a given panel or just a global zoom level (global for the editor). I personally like the panel zoom levels, because you could have one panel you're mostly working in with bigger font, and then a secondary panel with small font. Like this:

[Nodd]

👍 for a global zoom.
By "panel zoom levels", you mean when the editor is splitted ?

[goanpeca]

I can take a look at this... should be an easy fix.

[Garrett-R]

@Nodd, exactly. I also added a screenshot to clarify. Not sure if that panel-zoom is more useful to others than a global-zoom, but just an idea.

[goanpeca]

@ccordoba12 you agree with this?

[goanpeca]

@Garrett-R we can implement all options, per editor, per panel, or global... now the question @spyder-ide/core-developers is if we should add options in preferences to control this behavior, and what should be default?

We could have:

• Use global zoom for all editor stacks
• Use zoom per split stack

[ccordoba12]

I don't agree with this. Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- work like in browsers, i.e. they are temporary and they work on a per page (file, in our case) basis.

If you want to increase the font size of every file, that's very easy: just go to

Preferences > Editor

and select a bigger size for your current font :-)

[ccordoba12]

@goanpeca, thanks for understanding :-) We don't need to add option after option for this kind of things, just tell users how things work in Spyder.

[goanpeca]

True, I completely forgot about the font size 😄

[Garrett-R]

I know the issues already closed and I don't want to waste your guys' time, so feel free to just ignore my rebuttal here. 😜

Actually, I was aware of the ability to set global zoom through preferences. It just seemed like surprising behavior when I use CTL+mousewheel to zoom in (say I'm leaning back fruther from the screen, or I've gone down to a single panel), and then I switch tabs and suddenly the font gets smaller.

Browsers are different I think you open different websites, you might open a website with tiny text and then one with huge text, so "per-domain zoom settings" are ideal. But for code, I can't think of any situation where someone is flipping between two files and they desire fileA.py to be in one font size and fileB.py to be in a different font size.

Hmm... interesting, I see Qt Creator (my favorite C++ IDE) has CTL+mousewheel control global zoom-level, while Code::Blocks, Geany, Eric and Ninja IDE have it controlling per-file zoom. Wow, I'm kind of surprised....

[vasselai]

Sorry to necro this discussion, but I am not sure whether it makes sense for me to open a new issue about this. I mean, it totally makes sense that if one wants to zoom in for all files, one should just go there and change the font size in the preferences. The problem, however, is that Spyder does not allow anymore one to define different font sizes for Editor and Console. The consequence is that if one uses Spyder in a big wide monitor and wants to increase the Editor's font accordingly, the font for the console becomes just huge.

Could you guys consider a way of solving that? Should I put a new issue asking to check for this?

Thanks!

[ccordoba12]

@goanpeca, what do you think? I don't know what we could do about it from the user experience point of view.

[goanpeca]

Hmmm me neither need to think about it

[jnsebgosselin]

I think that could be a good idea to be able to set the font size and family independently for the Editor and the Console. Basically, we could take the same layout as for the font preference in "Genenal" and put it under "Editor" and "IPython console" instead.

Font size in General should not be related to the font of the Editor and the IPython console in my opinion, but to the font of the UI. It is more coherent with other options found on this panel such as Qt windows style and Icon style.

[jnsebgosselin]

@vasselai That being said, one quick solution for this could be to set the font in the preferences so that it looks good in the Editor and Ctrl- in the console to reduce the font of the console.

[vasselai]

Thanks you all for taking the issue into consideration. I do think that allowing such customizations to be different for the editor and for the console could be pretty helpful. Specially in the age of big resolutions.

@jnsebgosselin That is precisely what I have been doing. Whenever I start Spyder, I go there to the console and Zoom out with Ctrl -. That is exactly what made me come here to talk about this: I thought that if the program allows me to zoom in or out the font size to different levels in the console and in the editor, it could be easy-ish to allow them have different levels at the start state.

By the way, annother option would be to have "zoom level" as a different parameter from "font size".

[jnsebgosselin]

I think a new issue should be opened for this since it is a different problem than the one described in the OP.

[ccordoba12]

Yes, @vasselai, please open a new issue for your concern.