I have done some further investigation on this issue and the results are far from satisfactory.
XP does have an option to change the default system font size, but the Windows L&F on the whole ignores it.
Vista does not have a satisfactory to change the default system font size.
Windows 7 does have an option to change the system default font size and the windows L&F does respect this, but the fonts look absolutely crap.
The only way I can see to fix this is to over-ride the Windows L&F UI defaults in the UIManager after we set the Windows L&F. I got very good results by simply reading each UIManager key and if the corresponding value was a FontUIResouce, then multiply its size by 1.2 and set it back. The same scale factor of 1.2 needs to be applied to the Row Height in the JTree’s.
This gave a very nice result on XP and Vista, I haven’t been able to test it on 7 yet. Windows 7 is a problem because it does try to scale the fonts to suit the system default, but does it very badly. To fix 7, we would need to set the font sizes directly, rather than scaling the existing fonts.
What is the Unix and Mac situation? Do they have system default font setting and does the Windows L&F respect them?
I’m thinking of adding a Font Size preference where you can set a % scaling value that will be applied to the default font size, whatever that may be. We could build in the 1.2 factor as a default for the Windows L&F. Windows 7 needs more testing and may have to be treated as a special case.
Brent.