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over 1 year ago

Users complain of very small text in simple data fields

Original thread: https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/259355/users-complain-of-very-small-text-in-simple-data-fields

Although I can't personally recreate this problem, I am reposting it here for visibility, as multiple users have complained of this issue, for multiple simple data field apps.

Text of original post:


Is this happening to anyone else? At first it was only happening for one of my simple data field apps, so I thought it was an isolated incident.

Now a user of a 2nd simple data field app has made the same complaint. Some users report that they used to see normal-sized text, and one day it suddenly became small. More recently, some new users say that it's always been small.

In one case I'm only displaying characters available in number fonts (for simple data fields *) such as digits, ".", ":", and "-" (verified in the simulator). (* I'm aware that simple data fields may be slightly more restrictive than necessary when it comes to which characters it will display in numerical fonts. i.e. The set of available characters for number fonts may be bigger in some cases than the set of characters that a simple data field will render in a number font). Even in this case, I've asked an affected user to change the settings so that only digits are displayed, and the problem persists.

In the other case I'm only displaying digits.

And I can't recreate this in the simulator or on my real 935 device.

What I see on my watch (normal-sized text):

https://ibb.co/1QC0c5V

What they see on their watch (text that's too small):

https://ibb.co/sFCYvvY

It's not limited to one device as Vivoactive 4 and Edge 530 users have both complained.

The two apps in question are:

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/fd690281-9c22-4fee-a81e-3b7f39aa67c5

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/2bc8b0c1-dd83-4679-96f1-0ae2a0925920

The latter (Total Ascent) literally does nothing but convert ActivityInfo.totalAscent to the user's preferred units and round it to a whole number.

using Toybox.WatchUi;

class totalAscentView extends WatchUi.SimpleDataField {

	var elevationUnits;
	function getUnits()
	{
		var settings = System.getDeviceSettings();
		elevationUnits = settings.elevationUnits;
	}

	// m to feet
	private function convertAltitude(value)
	{
		if (value == null)
		{
			return null;
		}
		
		if (elevationUnits == System.UNIT_STATUTE)
		{
			value = value / 0.3048;
		}
		return value;
	}		


    function initialize() {
        SimpleDataField.initialize();
        label = "Ascent";
    }

    function compute(info) {
    	getUnits();
        
        var val = convertAltitude(info.totalAscent);
        if (val == null)
        {
        	return 0;
        }
        
        return Math.round(val).toNumber();
    }
}

Parents
  • Seeing something similar with a Simple Data Field on Edge 530.  The auto scaling of the text/font size seems to work for layouts with 4 or more fields and for the smaller field in layout "3B" (two large, 1 small field). However, for layouts with 1 or 2 fields, or for layout "3A" (3 large and equally sized fields), the text is very small, even smaller than when auto scaled for smaller fields in other layouts.  Fonts look fine in the simulator.  The text string does not have hyphen/minus/dash symbols that may have triggered smaller font size some years ago.  I am aware that a potential fix is to write a Data Field and address font size explicitly, but I hope that effort is not the only solution.

    Any thoughts?   Thanks ...

Comment
  • Seeing something similar with a Simple Data Field on Edge 530.  The auto scaling of the text/font size seems to work for layouts with 4 or more fields and for the smaller field in layout "3B" (two large, 1 small field). However, for layouts with 1 or 2 fields, or for layout "3A" (3 large and equally sized fields), the text is very small, even smaller than when auto scaled for smaller fields in other layouts.  Fonts look fine in the simulator.  The text string does not have hyphen/minus/dash symbols that may have triggered smaller font size some years ago.  I am aware that a potential fix is to write a Data Field and address font size explicitly, but I hope that effort is not the only solution.

    Any thoughts?   Thanks ...

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