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UI: UI_MENU_ARROW_SEP Unicode Character
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Authored by Harley Acheson (harley) on Jul 29 2022, 9:35 PM.

Details

Summary

Use a smaller arrow text character as menu item separator.


The recent font stack changes result in our arrow separator (UI_MENU_ARROW_SEP) looking much larger than before. The following shows what it used to look like on the extreme left. To the right of that is how it looks now in current master using the same character. Next is one alternative character, while the last is the result of this patch:

Why the change and which version of U+25B6 is actually correct?

We used to use a single font that we assembled on our own, starting with one font but then adding to it from other fonts. This means that not only was our font old but it had internal inconsistencies. The character used (U+25B6) is meant to be a large right-facing solid triangle. The alternatives shown are meant to be "medium" and "small" versions of that. Our old one was simply smaller than it was supposed to be. This probably happened because we were trying to be economical with what characters we included because we had an approaching maximum. However now no longer have a limit and have full coverage of the symbols and arrows codepoint ranges.

Note that this patch uses the smallest of the arrows (U+25B8) to make it look as close as possible to the old font. However, without that consideration I would personally use the "medium" version (U+2BC8), shown above second from right.

Diff Detail

Repository
rB Blender

Event Timeline

Harley Acheson (harley) requested review of this revision.Jul 29 2022, 9:35 PM
Harley Acheson (harley) created this revision.

The old ones were a bit too small indeed. From the pictures above I like the last one the most. If it’s bigger I feel like they pull too much attention. The important bit is the text, not the arrow after all.

@Julian Eisel (Severin) - ...I like the last one the most...

Yes, this patch changes it to that one. And I'm perfectly happy with that one. I only slightly prefer the balance in U+2bc8 (second to last) but don't care that much. It might be partly that U+25B8 is a little lower - basically goes from centered vertically in capitals to vertically centered in lowercase. Or so. I'm sure nobody will notice or care.

Unless anyone feels strongly we should just go with that last one and commit this patch.

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Jul 29 2022, 10:07 PM
This revision was automatically updated to reflect the committed changes.

But I also like U+2BC8 because of slightly bigger spacing