Font for Zotero

JGebauer
Is there a way to change the font inside Zotero? With the currently used font it is impossible to distinguish different dashes, ie hyphens and longer ones.
  • adamsmith
    don't know about the font,

    but
    a) they should come across clearly, see hypen, en-dash (Halbgeviertstrich), and em-dash (Geviertstrich) here:
    https://imgur.com/a/CSWcR

    b) note that hypens vs. en-dashes in page ranges don't matter in Zotero. They're automatically converted (mostly to en-dashes but there are some exceptions) in the citation style via the page-range-delimiter option
  • bwiernik
    I believe it is only possible to change the font family in Notes, but not in the rest of the Zotero interface.
  • JGebauer
    @adamsmith:
    No, inside of Zotero (Mac) there is no visible difference between hyphen and en-dash.
    I know that in page ranges Zotero does this mostly automatically (although only when there is a simple page range, which is not always the case, I sometimes have to use the locator subtype "Volume", followed by "I, S. 15–20", in which case it doesn't substitute the hyphen with an en-dash).

    However, in titles en-dashes appear from time to time, as well. It is not ideal that those cannot be distinguished inside Zotero.
  • bwiernik
    On Mac, Zotero uses Helvetica, and to me the differences between hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes are quite clear.

    See:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/jpsirai6lxmgy2p/zotero dashes.png?dl=0

    If it's not clear for you, I'd try checking your system display settings for your screen resolution and font smoothing.
  • JGebauer
    This is most certainly not the case here. It seems that my System (Sierra 10.12.6) has a different system font, which Zotero uses, and which displays no difference between en-dash and hyphens (actually the spacing seems to be _smaller_ for the en-dash, but only marginally).
    (It is actually the same font that this Forum displays in, I see no difference here between
    - (hyphen)
    – (en-dash)
    If you do, then that means my system displays with a different font. I cannot see any way to change this.
  • bwiernik
    You could try to change your system font—http://osxdaily.com/2017/11/19/change-macos-high-sierra-system-font-lucida-grande/
  • adamsmith
    (yes, definitely seeing differences between dashes on this forum)
  • dstillman
    On macOS this would be the difference between Lucida Grande (hyphens slightly longer than en dashes) and San Francisco (hyphens shorter than en dashes). Easiest way to tell the difference is the flat 'e' terminals in Lucida Grande vs. the curved ones in San Francisco. (San Francisco is similar to Helvetica on both counts.)

    This forum uses Lucida Grande if available, which is why you see the longer hyphen here. (@adamsmith, I don't think most Linuxes have Lucida Grande by default, so you might be seeing Verdana.)

    But I'm actually not sure what's going on here in Zotero. Lucida Grande used to be the default system font in earlier macOS releases, but in El Capitan and above it's San Francisco. Zotero should use the system font, and indeed, I get San Francisco with correct hyphens on a Mac with a Retina display. But on another Mac without a Retina display (which may or may not be relevant) I'm getting Lucida Grande in Zotero, even though the system font is San Francisco.
  • JGebauer
    Well, I am on a Retina Macbook pro, and I am getting Lucida Grande, while my Menus are in San Francisco. Not sure what is going on either.
  • JGebauer
    In case anyone else is still having this problem, I just found the solution here:
    https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/some-apps-use-lucida-grande-instead-of-sf-only-my-user-account.2039770/
  • xujchen
    Changing the system font is exactly what I have done to deal with this. @bwiernik
    Unfortunately, after upgrading to macOS 10.15 Catalina, there isn't a way to do this yet. I wish I hadn't done the upgrade...
  • dstillman
    @xujchen: I'm not quite sure what you're saying isn't possible in Catalina or what you're trying to fix — the command in the MacRumors thread still works on Catalina to reset the system font to San Francisco if it's been overridden back to Lucida Grande — but Zotero 5.0.75 and later automatically use Lucida Grande on non-Retina displays, since San Francisco looks pretty terrible at small sizes on non-Retina displays.
  • dstillman
    Follow-up on the automatic switching to Lucida Grande on non-Retina displays in Zotero 5.0.75 and 5.0.76:

    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/79564/how-to-stop-zotero-from-automatically-switching-fonts-on-mac
This discussion has been closed.