VMD-L Mailing List

From: Robert Brunner (rbrunner_at_uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Jun 01 2006 - 23:04:12 CDT

It looks like the "Universal Access" controls on the Mac do allow the
OpenGL window to be expanded. Run VMD, then look in the Universal
Access under System Preferences to see how to activate the screen zoom.

Robert

On Jun 1, 2006, at 3:28 PM, John Stone wrote:

>
> Dow,
> I don't know of a nice solution for this. The VMD graphical
> interface
> is written in FLTK, and so far as I know there isn't a way of
> redefining
> the font size used for the widgets on-the-fly. Even if there was,
> it might
> require redefining all of the window extents based on calculated
> font sizes
> and the required spacing for the controls, and that would still
> leave you
> with the problem of some of the widgets being too small (checkboxes,
> FLTK "counters", etc).
>
> The most likely reason the VMD OpenGL graphics window doesn't show up
> in the magnifier view is because the windowing system doesn't have
> direct access to manipulate the 3-D framebuffer contents on the fly
> like it does for the other windows. OpenGL (Direct X, and so on)
> windows
> are handled differently, much like a DVD player window would be.
> This is all very problematic with the impaired vision issue due
> to the behavior of the windowing systems and the graphical
> interface toolkits
> that exist today (particularly the free ones like FLTK, Qt, etc).
>
> A Mac may be the best bet for usability, as Apple has done much more
> to integrate the accessibility functions into the core of their
> windowing system as I recall. Do you have any Macs around?
> It would be worth taking a look.
> Windows would likely be next best after the Mac, but only with a
> video board
> the "plays nice" with the magnifier apps (some do, some don't).
>
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 10:12:20AM -0400, Dow Hurst DPHURST wrote:
>> John,
>> We have a visually impaired user who strains to read the fonts on the
>> menus. Is there a way to control the VMD menu font sizes for all
>> parts of
>> the menus? I need really large bold fonts for her to easily see the
>> screen. I've used mouseloupe software on Linux to do what
>> ZoomText does on
>> Windows. However, accelerated graphical software like VMD,
>> Schrodinger's
>> Maestro, or on Windows the program Powerpoint, seem to not play
>> nice with
>> the required Composite extension to predisplay an enlarged portion
>> of the
>> screen. I don't know how Windows does the Composite functionality
>> but the
>> effect is identical between Linux and Windows. If the ZoomText or
>> mouseloupe magnifier hits a portion of the accelerated window, the
>> accelerated window becomes blank with a black background. So,
>> what works
>> best for visually impaired users is to have the application
>> enlarge the
>> fonts for text and menu items. What do you think? The user has
>> albinism
>> so has color requirements too. Changing the font size and color
>> would be
>> optimal. A letter that is about a quarter of an inch high and
>> bold is what
>> I see her using a lot. We have two 17inch LCD monitors with the
>> Nvidia
>> TwinView for her right now on SUSE9.3 with the Quadro FX1400
>> Nvidia card.
>> Dow
>
> --
> NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu Phone: 217-244-3349
> WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Fax: 217-244-6078