Ugly RPC Console Output on macOS

[jarolrod]

Edit: This is a macOS specific issue. A monospace font is used on Linux and windows, but not on macOS. Add to the list of reasons to embed a regular monospace font.

The help output for any RPC command is formatted differently in the macOS GUI console versus a Linux GUI console.

With the Linux GUI console, the type/descriptions for an argument/result are shown at a uniform distance from the argument/result itself, thanks to the use of a monospace font.

With the macOS GUI console, the type/descriptions do not line up because a monospace font is not used. This leads to 'ugly' output.

Example: help setwalletflag

macOS GUI RPC Console

Linux GUI RPC Console

[hebasto]

A monospace font is used on Linux and windows, but not on macOS.

Actually, the font family in the default stylesheet

gui/src/qt/rpcconsole.cpp

Lines 805 to 817 in f0fa324

	// Set default style sheet
	QFontInfo fixedFontInfo(GUIUtil::fixedPitchFont());
	ui->messagesWidget->document()->setDefaultStyleSheet(
	QString(
	"table { }"
	"td.time { color: #808080; font-size: %2; padding-top: 3px; } "
	"td.message { font-family: %1; font-size: %2; white-space:pre-wrap; } "
	"td.cmd-request { color: #006060; } "
	"td.cmd-error { color: red; } "
	".secwarning { color: red; }"
	"b { color: #006060; } "
	).arg(fixedFontInfo.family(), QString("%1pt").arg(consoleFontSize))
	);

is set correctly to .AppleSystemUIFontMonospaced.

But this approach (using styleesheets) does not work on macOS. Probably, the reason of such behavior is the fact that .AppleSystemUIFontMonospaced is a private font family.

UPDATE. From Qt Style Sheets docs:

However, this wasn't guaranteed to work for all styles, because style authors are restricted by the different platforms' guidelines and (on Windows and macOS) by the native theme engine.

[hebasto]

Maybe, the following patch

diff --git a/src/qt/rpcconsole.cpp b/src/qt/rpcconsole.cpp
index 34d055e5a..1acfaa3b2 100644
--- a/src/qt/rpcconsole.cpp
+++ b/src/qt/rpcconsole.cpp
@@ -803,7 +803,7 @@ void RPCConsole::clear(bool clearHistory)
     }
 
     // Set default style sheet
-    QFontInfo fixedFontInfo(GUIUtil::fixedPitchFont());
+    QFontInfo fixedFontInfo(GUIUtil::fixedPitchFont(true));
     ui->messagesWidget->document()->setDefaultStyleSheet(
         QString(
                 "table { }"

is a step to fix this issue?

[hebasto]

Closing via #477.