Hello everyone!
My PicoCalc hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m “studying” MMBasic so I can start programming as soon as I have it.
One of the questions I have is whether it’s possible to change the font size in the built-in editor. The photos I’ve seen always show the editor with a small green font.
Can this be changed? How?
Thanks!
So the short answer, from what I can tell, is: Not easily.
What it would require is someone providing a larger bitmap font to use with the coded text rendering system, and without exploring that (and it varies by image used), it’s difficult to say how difficult it would be to change to a different font size.
I’m exploring this exact problem, and will update (at least w.r.t. FORTH) once I have a clearer sense of how easily the Arduino Gfx font can be changed (and whether the controller supports text mode at different sizes easily).
It’s hard-coded into PicoMite. So while it could be possible to change, it would be painful and might break various assumptions and optimizations that depend on it being the default size. And unless even more work was put into it, it would mean creating another build target for PicoMite (or three if also including WebMite and both Pico and Pico2) or it would be the new default for everyone, whether they want it or not. 
I suspect it’s easier to change it in MicroPython, Forth, uLisp, etc. But even those might require separate firmware builds if you want it to be the default and save a little space.
You’re absolutely right—it’s a significant change to the core PicoMite software. I was really hoping there might be a simple constant or configuration variable to bump up the font size, since my eyesight isn’t great. I understand now why that isn’t available without a major overhaul or additional build targets. Thank you for the clear explanation and for taking the time to outline the challenges involved.
One thing to remember is that the PicoMite editor does not line wrap, so if you use a larger font you will be able to enter fewer characters horizontally, and it will affect editing code you already have stored.
The latest versions of PicoMite and WebMite have:
OPTION CONTINUATION LINES ON/OFF
Pretty sure the default is off, but it’s a helpful thing to add, especially on the PicoCalc. It inserts underscore characters as line continueation characters to break a single line of code across multiple line(s). I’m generally not a fan of editors that make changes to the code being edited, but it can already do that in terms of case for the keywords (OPTION CASE LOWER |
UPPER | TITLE), and probably some other things. And I eventually grew used to continuation lines and have kept them on.
For posting code on the forum, I always make sure to manually join those lines, since the code will break if someone tried to run it with the option off. Plus, it just makes it less readable to have the underscores scattered around. But it’s a bit more practical on the device itself, and means you don’t have to rely on “tricks” like backspacing off the front of a line to join it to the end of the line before it, resulting in a long line that is saved but that you can’t actaully see or edit anymore. Line continuation prevents that little hack, but I’m not sure how useful that hack was anyway since it meant some code was inaccessable in the editor unless you chose (and remembered) to break the line again, look at it, edit or whatever and then backspaced to join it and hide it back.
There’s a limitation in the editor that a line cannot be longer than screen width.
Larger font = shorter lines
Not quite. I have some lines 2x screen width. Just cut in half to edit, then backspace back together.
Yeah I know.
In 6.0 there’s even a new feature, that you can put ’ _’ (space, underscore) end of the line to indicate a joint line, like the python backslash
Still, not being able to scroll horizontally is a cute tribute to the red 80th column (colorcol) in vim, in a retro way.
OPTION LCDPANEL CONSOLE can be used to change the default font (at least on a standard PicoMite)