User-level (i.e., upgrade-resistent) CSS edits to help content?

[lphilpot]

For my eyes on my monitor the fonts in the online help are too small to be optimal. I'm running the MSI version on Windows and have modified a few values in two stylesheets located in C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo 2\PhotoHelp\Contents\Resources\resources\css -- style.css and frontpage.css. Please note, you'll need admin access to modify these files.

The edits are right at the top of each file.

style.css

body, html {
/*
    font-family: "-apple-system", "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
    font-size: 10pt;
*/
    font-family: Inter, "-apple-system", "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
    font-size: 12pt;
    background-color: white;
    text-align: left;
    color: #404040;
    width: 96%;
    }

frontpage.css

body, html {
  margin: 0;
/*
  font-family: "-apple-system", "Lucida Grande", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  font-size: 12pt;
*/
  font-family: Inter, "-apple-system", "Lucida Grande", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  font-size: 14pt;
  background-color: #fff;
  width: 100%;
    }

In each case I increased the font-size tag by two points and (optionally, but recommended) added the Google Inter font to the font-family list, which I already have installed. Inter is very readable and a couple of extra points helps mightily.

But obviously this will get overwritten with the next upgrade. Is there a way to add these to my profile so they'll be persistent?

Thanks.

[MikeTO]

Hi Len, I don't think there's a way to make those persistent but if you find the size too small you can also access the online help from https://affinity.help which is more flexible. I avoid the in-app online help as much as possible.

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, lphilpot said:

For my eyes on my monitor the fonts in the online help are too small to be optimal.

The last time I checked, the in-app Help allowed Ctrl-+ to increase font size, just as a browser does for the online Help. That might provide an alternative to modifying the files

[walt.farrell]

Alternatively, you can Bookmark the in-app Help in your normal web browser, which should remember the magnification level. Or you can use developer tools in the browser to apply your changes more dynamically, perhaps.

[lphilpot]

Yeah, I have browser bookmarks to both the local and online help, which works. What I've done works fine, I'll just have to remember to do it again after the next upgrade. It takes all of five minutes.

It would be nice if the help system was context-sensitive, but of course that's a whole 'nuther topic...

Thanks.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

The last time I checked, the in-app Help allowed Ctrl-+ to increase font size, just as a browser does for the online Help. 

FWIW, it works the same on Macs, except with CMD rather than CTRL. I'm not sure if it is persistent but sort of surprisingly CMD-0 does not return it to the default, so it is not quite like a Mac browser in that respect.

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, lphilpot said:

But obviously this will get overwritten with the next upgrade. Is there a way to add these to my profile so they'll be persistent?

Then keep the editied/modified CSS files as a backup somewhere on your disk together with some Powershell script which then copies them over (replaces initial origs) into the wanted help contents path (aka C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo 2\PhotoHelp\Contents\Resources\resources\css). - Or even better, write just one Win Powershell script which when executed then modifies both CSS files contents wise accordingly to the wanted font sizes (...it's just a matter of find and replace two lines or values in files, so pretty easy to perform).

[lphilpot]

9 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Or even better, write just one Win Powershell script

If I was back on Linux, that would already be done, albeit in shell. But I so seriously dislike PowerShell that I'll probably just refer to the notes I made when I first bought AP two years ago and spend the five minutes on in the files. 🙂

Thanks.

[v_kyr]

11 hours ago, lphilpot said:

If I was back on Linux, that would already be done, albeit in shell. But I so seriously dislike PowerShell that I'll probably just refer to the notes I made when I first bought AP two years ago and spend the five minutes on in the files.

Of course you can also use under Win whatever scripting lang (Python, Shell-Scripts, Perl, ...) or prog lang (C#, VBasic, C, Java, ...) you like more than MS PowerShell, in order to do that task.

The easiest I can think of is a sh or batch script which uses "Gnu sed" here for a find/replace (gsed is also available for Win), aka ...

• gsed -i 's/<search regex>/<replacement>/g' <input file>

So something like ...

• gsed -i 's/font-size: 10pt;/font-size: 12pt;/g' 'C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo 2\PhotoHelp\Contents\Resources\resources\css\style.css'
• gsed -i 's/font-size: 12pt;/font-size: 14pt;/g' 'C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo 2\PhotoHelp\Contents\Resources\resources\css\frontpage.css'

 

[bures]

The font size in the help is very small indeed. The developers could think about how to work with the font size better considering different monitor sizes.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, bures said:

The font size in the help is very small indeed. The developers could think about how to work with the font size better considering different monitor sizes.

Does the CTRL +- (Windows) or CMD +- (Mac) command mentioned above by @walt.farrell  not work for you?

[lphilpot]

37 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Does the CTRL +- (Windows) or CMD +- (Mac) command mentioned above by @walt.farrell  not work for you?

For me, yes it does but it resets every time Help is closed.

[lphilpot]

5 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Of course you can also use under Win whatever scripting lang (Python, Shell-Scripts, Perl, ...) or prog lang (C#, VBasic, C, Java, ...) you like more than MS PowerShell, in order to do that task.

The easiest I can think of is a sh or batch script which uses "Gnu sed" here for a find/replace (gsed is also available for Win), aka ...

• gsed -i 's/<search regex>/<replacement>/g' <input file>

So something like ...

• gsed -i 's/font-size: 10pt;/font-size: 12pt;/g' 'C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo 2\PhotoHelp\Contents\Resources\resources\css\style.css'
• gsed -i 's/font-size: 12pt;/font-size: 14pt;/g' 'C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo 2\PhotoHelp\Contents\Resources\resources\css\frontpage.css'

Although on Windows it'll have to use double quotes, not apostrophes IME. But I agree -- I wrote hundreds of such scripts in 20+ years of unix administration (both at home and at work) but I've just not done it for this task. I even have a couple now that I run from WSL, since they do things that are fiddly from cmd.exe. I have the GNU utilities installed, Perl is there, Python (yuck) is there and I may have a copy of gcc stashed away somewhere... But my minimal C skills haven't been used for more than a decade. 🙂

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, lphilpot said:

... I even have a couple now that I run from WSL, since they do things that are fiddly from cmd.exe. I have the GNU utilities installed, Perl is there, Python (yuck) is there and I may have a copy of gcc stashed away somewhere... But my minimal C skills haven't been used for more than a decade.

For a prog IMO you can much easier and quicker build a little GUI prog in C#, than a C/C++ prog (...as I for example once did for the Affinity OpenCL Disabler, which checks, modifies and also can create missing settings files). - Though making instead some Bash+Gnu Utils || Perl || Python script for such tasks, is also always fun to do and often also the much quicker way to handle such things!