Making font size smaller than 1 Java GUI

Question

I want to label my hashmarks in my grid for my graph, however when I use even font size 1 it is way to big! Is there a way to make a font size smaller than 1? Am I missing something with how I'm coding it?

Here's the code which generates the grid and attempts to put a label on the hash.

     for (double k = myStart1; k <= myEnd1; k = k + (myEnd1 - myStart1) / 8) {
    g2.setColor(Color.BLACK);
        g2.draw(new Line2D.Double(k, (max - min) / 60, k, -(max - min) / 60));
        String labelx=String.valueOf(k);
        Float xCo=Float.parseFloat(Double.toString(k));
        g2.setFont(new Font("SansSerif",Font.PLAIN,1));
        g2.drawString(labelx, xCo, 0);
    }

Here's a screenshot of the graph produced by x^2. enter image description here

This makes no sense. Font size of 1 is not even readable, so less than 1 would be less than non-readable. Are you sure that you're setting the Font correctly? — Hovercraft Full Of Eels, Nov 28 '12 at 05:14
I suspect that you have a bug, and perhaps it's that there is no Font, "SansSerif" (are you sure that this is correct?). Have you tried `g2.setFont(new Font(Font.SANS_SERIF, Font.PLAIN, 1));`? — Hovercraft Full Of Eels, Nov 28 '12 at 05:16
"SansSerif" is perfectly valid, check the constructor here: http://goo.gl/1cQU1 — username tbd, Nov 28 '12 at 05:19
Maybe Java is reverting the font size to 16 or so because 1 is smaller than it can render. I doubt this is the case, but you can try setting the font size to 8, 10, or 12. Alternatively, maybe the font named "SansSerif" isn't found, resulting in the default font being used, which would have that default size of 16. — FThompson, Nov 28 '12 at 05:20
@usernametbd: Thanks for that. Then my suggestion was invalid, but my assumption that there's a bug somewhere in the OP's code is still a possibility. Again, thanks. — Hovercraft Full Of Eels, Nov 28 '12 at 05:20
Could it be because of the way I scaled the graph earlier that even font 1 now is huge? — Evan Hirtenfeld, Nov 28 '12 at 05:23
@Evan If you are scaling the entire Graphics object, indeed that could be the issue. — FThompson, Nov 28 '12 at 05:24
I need to scale, to make my graph plot properly, is there another way? — Evan Hirtenfeld, Nov 28 '12 at 05:26

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 28 '12 at 05:27

As I'm sure you've already noted, the Font constructor takes an int for the size parameter- effectively rendering impossible the construction of a font (using this method, at least) which has a size between 0 and 1.

I did, however, find the deriveFont method of the Font class particularly interesting:

public Font deriveFont(float size)

Creates a new Font object by replicating the current Font object and applying a new size to it.

Parameters: size - the size for the new Font.

The deriveFont method, which claims to construct a new Font with the given size, takes a float as the parameter- therefore, it might be possible to do something like this:

Font theFont = new Font("SansSerif",Font.PLAIN,1);
theFont = theFont.deriveFont(0.5);
g2.setFont(theFont);

Resulting in a font with a size of 0.5.

Now, I haven't tested this myself- setting up a Graphics program takes time, so you're in a much better position to try it out than me. But just throwing it out there as a possibility.

A font can also be transformed at run-time. See [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/13440543/418556) for an example. — Andrew Thompson, Nov 28 '12 at 05:33

Making font size smaller than 1 Java GUI

1 Answers1