Font Weights

[Philip Race]

There's probably a bug on this but I think the font look up code may 
need some work

I think the CSS code may be using family + weight but then it reaches
com/sun/javafx/font/PrismFontLoader.java

    // REMIND. Some day need to have better granularity.

         boolean bold = weight != null &&
                        weight.ordinal() >= FontWeight.BOLD.ordinal();

And we don't have an API to return the FontWeight so you can't figure it 
out for yourself.
I really should fix all of the above.

Is the CSS code part all good though ?

Looking at CssParser I'm not sure what its doing is the intention of 
bolder and lighter
         } else if ("bolder".equals(ident)) {
             weight = FontWeight.BOLD.name();
         } else if ("lighter".equals(ident)) {
             weight = FontWeight.LIGHT.name();

I assume they are meant to say find something *relative*, not *absolute*
Perhaps in the absence of the API to find the real weight it wasn't 
implementable ?

-phil

On 5/29/25 11:33 AM, Dirk Lemmermann wrote:
> I think what I really want is that this feature „simply“ works as 
> documented. I have not looked at the implementation of the font 
> support, yet, but it feels like this shouldn’t be too hard to 
> implement correctly. If somebody knows more about the problem I would 
> love to hear about it.
>
> The official JavaFX CSS reference documentation at 
> https://openjfx.io/javadoc/24/javafx.graphics/javafx/scene/doc-files/cssref.html lists 
> font weights (integers) as possible values:
>
> <font-weight> The font's weight, using the following syntax:
> [ normal | bold | bolder | lighter | 100 | 200 | 300 | 400 | 500 | 600 
> | 700 | 800 | 900 ]
>
>  If this will never be supported then I think the docs need to reflect 
> that.
>
> Again, the main benefit of this working properly would be that 
> applications wouldn’t have to use the workaround anymore where the 
> font family name will be used directly in all the places where a piece 
> of text has a different weight than the default one.
>
> Dirk
>
>> Am 29.05.2025 um 20:03 schrieb John Hendrikx <john.hendrikx at gmail.com>:
>>
>>
>> On 29/05/2025 18:23, Dirk Lemmermann wrote:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> Is there any chance we can get font weight working properly so that I can use a font with medium boldness and use it by declaring: -fx-font-weight: bolder; or by declaring -fx-font-weight: 600;? I know I can work around it by using the font family name, e.g. „Rubik Medium“ but this makes it impossible to replace the font at runtime, which is a requirement I am facing right now in order to support users with dyslexia. I was also considering using a variable but this is not supported for font family names (e,g, „-my-font; „Rubik Medium“).
>> Just curious, how would a variable help here for the problem having 
>> the font selectable at runtime?
>>> Any other work arounds I am missing?
>>
>> I don't have any easy solutions here, and I'm unsure what is involved 
>> in actually making -fx-font-weight work better.
>>
>> So, all I can offer is something very ugly like having the user 
>> select a font, then generating a CSS file, and setting that on the 
>> root node; if you keep the styles for font selection separate it may 
>> be doable as you'd probably could get away with just replacing a 
>> single stylesheet then (ie. mark a TextField with ".font-large" 
>> specifically and define what that means in the custom CSS file).  
>> This is a bit anti-CSS as you'd prefer to mark such nodes only with 
>> their intended function, and determine a suitable font based on that, 
>> but styles in FX don't compose.
>>
>> If you're willing to go in the direction of generating all CSS files 
>> based on LESS or SCSS (at runtime mind you, I hate doing this during 
>> a build), more is possible:
>>
>> What I've been doing myself (although I don't allow runtime 
>> selection) is to allow users to modify CSS files; using LESS or SCSS 
>> one can neatly pack all font related stuff into a single file, so 
>> I've sort of solved this by having a `fonts.less` (see below).  I 
>> then mark styles with one of the custom styles (.light, .regular, 
>> etc) to indicate what final font they'll be using. However, to make 
>> this work even at run time, I'd have to regenerate all derived CSS 
>> files (but as I said, I can do this at runtime anyway) -- so the 
>> effort is in then primarily in auto-generating a base fonts CSS file 
>> given some user selection, then replacing all stylesheets that were 
>> set throughout the application (or just restarting the application).
>>
>> For now a user could do this manually by only editing `fonts.less` 
>> and then (re)starting the application.
>>
>> Here is the fonts.less file I was talking about (note: there is also 
>> a Linux variant as fonts work differently on different platforms as 
>> well... perhaps MacOS needs a modified one also, but I never tried there)
>>
>> fonts.less:
>>
>> /*
>> * The Noto Sans font supports many variations. To get the correct 
>> variation
>> * in JavaFX, select them as follows:
>> *
>> * - Black = Noto Sans Blk
>> * - Bold = Noto Sans + font-weight: bold
>> * - Semi Bold = Noto Sans SemBd
>> * - Medium = Noto Sans Med
>> * - Regular = Noto Sans + font-weight: normal
>> * - Light = Noto Sans Light
>> *
>> * Note that these names are for Windows. Other platforms can use
>> * slightly different names.
>> */
>>
>> .light {
>> -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans Light";
>> -fx-font-weight: normal;
>> }
>>
>> .regular {
>> -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans";
>> -fx-font-weight: normal;
>> }
>>
>> .medium {
>> -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans Med";
>> -fx-font-weight: bold;
>> }
>>
>> .semi-bold {
>> -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans SemBd";
>> -fx-font-weight: bold;
>> }
>>
>> .bold {
>> -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans";
>> -fx-font-weight: bold;
>> }
>>
>> .black {
>> -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans Blk";
>> -fx-font-weight: bold;
>> }
>>
>> fonts-linux.less:
>>
>> .light { -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans Light"; -fx-font-weight: normal; 
>> } .regular { -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans"; -fx-font-weight: normal; } 
>> .medium { -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans Medium"; -fx-font-weight: 
>> normal; } .semi-bold { -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans SemiBold"; 
>> -fx-font-weight: normal; } .bold { -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans"; 
>> -fx-font-weight: bold; } .black { -fx-font-family: "Noto Sans Black"; 
>> -fx-font-weight: normal; } And using it for some arbitrary style is 
>> then done (also with LESS) like:
>>
>> .style-p3-extra-light {
>> -fx-font-size: 15;
>> .light;
>> }
>>
>> Not what you hoped for I think :)
>>
>> --John
>>
>>> Dirk
>>>
>
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