After watching this early evening a YouTube video with Waddlesplash on the Lunduke Hour talking about his work on Haiku, I was impressed both with Waddlesplash and with the recent developments in Haiku (Well done, Waddlespash, it was an entertaining show) and so downloaded one of the latest nightly builds and burnt it to CD. It boots fine from live CD and the programs open very quickly.
The version I have been using live without installing yet is Nightly Build hrev50953-x86-gcc2-hybrid.
However, before installing it to my hard drive alongside Linux, I would like to know if there is a way to overcome 2 default problems for me which make using Haiku a bit of an uncomfortable experience. I did install Haiku in January 2013 but barely used it because of these default problems (and not having much free time to spend on finding out how to overcome them).
(a) Is there a language pack that I can download for my language?
(b) Is there a way to alter the font size (or the screen resolution) so that I can read the Menu and program names easily without having to put my face too close to the monitor screen?
Re (a): when I booted Haiku, I selected British English but the distro booted into US English with the word “Colour” spelt “Color” and I think that the date Tuesday 14 February 2017 (14/02/2017) was shown as February 14 2017 (02/14/2017). The short versions are different between the two countries. So if possible I would like to download a language pack for British English if this is possible. Does anyone know how?
Re (b): Both the icons and the text are very small on my monitor screen and I need to rectify this. In Linux I simply change the resolution from 1680x1050 to 1440x900, keeping the same resolution ratio but making text and icons look bigger. In Haiku this was not possible: 1440x900 was not on the screen resolution drop-down list.
So I looked in the Menu on the top right of the screen and selected Preferences/Appearance and changed the font sizes from 12 to 16. However this did not alter the font sizes under the desktop icons or the font sizes in the Menu itself. Nothing changed. It’s the text in the Menu that is too small - to change the font size when I open a text editor is no problem … I could enlarge the icons on the desktop too but I could neither enlarge the font underneath the icons nor could I enlarge the font size in the Menu that opens when one clicks under that leaf icon on the top right of the screen.
If I know I can make the default appearance comfortable for me, I would love to install this Haiku version and spend some time exploring and enjoying it. It’s very fast and looks fun.
You mentioned the language is British English if I read correctly… what’s the real difference really, except for minor discrepancies between it and defaults? Localise, centre, or other spellings may be different, but date formats, etc. can be changed through various preflets in Preferences to suit your liking. Otherwise, set the locale on first run or from locale and keymap preferences if you speak (and type in) another language.
As for the fonts, congrats on finding the font sizes in Appearance. Have you tried restarting the Desktop in Team Monitor or Haiku after applying font changes? At times, that’s needed for the new fonts and colors to take effect everywhere. I might also add to try different fonts and antialiasing settings to get the effect you desire.
That seems to be a bug. The en_gb.catalog for e.g. Appearance is included in the image and holds the Colors->Colours translation, but selecting “English (United Kingdom)” in the Locale prefs doesn’t have an effect: The tab in Appearance still says “Colors”. I’ll file a bug.
@teaman: As others have suggested, you’ll have to quit Deskbar and Tracker (either with TeamMonitor (CTRL+ALT+DEL) or ProcessController (the CPU meter icon in the Deskbar). Both are restarted automatically.
You set the time etc. formatting in the Locale preferences. See the Userguide.
Thanks for the replies. @apgreimann
British English is my language and it is part of my culture. It’s “minor discrepancies” are what makes it important to me. When I’m sitting in my own home, I’m more at ease on my computer when using my own language - but if, for example, I were travelling in the States, I wouldn’t mind using American English at all, or the language of any country that I was in, if I could communicate in that language.
I wasn’t sure what you meant by “Team Monitor” and knew rebooting a live system would have no effect so I installed the Nightly Build to my hard drive - well done, team, on allowing such a fast installation - didn;t check the time but it seemed all up and running in 10 minutes or so? I changed the font sizes and rebooted and the on-screen text is just the right size for me now. Perfect!
@other replies
(1) I will check out that language link - very useful info.
(2) Thanks for clarifying Team Mate and Process Controller, humdinger.
Talking about bugs, a quick feedback from a Haiku newcomer - system lighning fast and very pretty; webpositive icon on desktop does not work - sends message: "could not open WebPositive (Missing libraries: libwtf.so, libjavascripot.so,libwebcore.so, libwebkit.so) but if I go into the Menu top right of screen and go to applications/webpositive then webpositive launches from there and I am using it now to write this post; also I opened a terminal and typed > installoptionalpackage libwebkit.so and the response was: installoptionalpackage: command not found (NB I also tried it with: > ./installoptionalpackage libwebkit.so but the response was the same. So the install command is not understood, unless I am using the wrong syntax?
I have installed the latest nightly build so I am sure these bugs will be ironed out in the Beta, when it finally appears … Thanks again for replying and apologies if this post too long.
The installoptionalpackage command was used in alpha4, but since then we have replaced it with a much better package manager. You can use the pkgman command from terminal, or use the HaikuDepot GUI.
@PulkoMandy
Thanks . I’ll check that out.
There are so many things to find out with a new operating system, I’ll keep checking the Forum too to read other problems and pick up tips. This initial help has been appreciated and now I better read all the documentation
To do this, the function should be installed before the name of an icon is displayed in several lines. But please ask only if the beta is out otherwise we wait for years again
The icons in the tracker can be adjusted in size but the label is not, that is correct
