Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 April 21

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April 21

Monospaced fonts in Chrome

Is there a reason why monospaced fonts cannot be seen in Google Chrome? For example, as I type this, in the edit box it used to be Courier, but now it is showing up as Arial. And on sites such as Retrosheet, statistical data is difficult to follow in columns without a monospaced font. I have checked the browser settings, and I have Courier listed as my monospaced font. But it just doesn't show up anymore, on any site.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 06:45, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Following up, everything is showing up Arial, even fonts specified to be something else. For example, if I try to make these words should be appearing as Times New Roman, but on my screen they are Arial. My signature should be Century Gothic.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 07:34, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Are you using your computer or someone else's computer? In settings, under Web Content, you can set how fonts are used. You can set it to use Arial for everything or Wingdings for everything - anything you like. If it is not your computer, I expect that the person who set it up went in and set the fonts that way. If it is your computer (and nobody else had access to mess with you), then it is an issue of trying to figure out how your settings got messed up. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 12:46, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

It is my computer, and under the Web Content settings, the fonts are set for Futura (standard), Georgia (serif), Futura (sans-serif), and Courier New (fixed-width). I do not even have Arial selected. Yet everything is showing up Arial. Thanks for your suggestion, but that is not it.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 13:46, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes poorly written extensions can mess with Chrome's font rendering. I would try disabling all extensions and see if that fixes the problem. If it does, it shouldn't be too hard to turn them back on one at a time to figure out which one is causing the issue. ApLundell (talk) 14:50, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I do not know what that means, "disabling all extensions". I don't even know what extensions are or where to find them. And if I could find them, how are they disabled?    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 01:55, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

here are some instructions.

Basically, you click the hamburger button (☰) in the upper right, you click "tools/extensions". You should get a list of all the plugins installed in your browser. There will probably be a couple basic ones from Google, maybe whatever ad-blocker you have installed, and probably just that. Anything else, be suspicious if you don't remember installing it. ApLundell (talk) 17:51, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, ApLundell! I found the problem. There was an extension called CSS Override. I'm not sure where it came from, but it's gone now!    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 20:23, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Please help identify this graph and suggest software that could replicate it.

http://imgur.com/JUEpEBi

Can someone please help identify this graph and suggest some kind of software that could replicate it? Much obliged! 138.253.64.157 (talk) 13:22, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I could do that in Inkscape quickly. It is just a bunch of gradient fill bezier lines. I'd prefer to use Dia, but Dia doesn't do gradient fill on lines. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 13:43, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

D3.js does do this kind of chord diagram (which is what you want, but with a circle rather than mapping one range to another). D3 is super flexible, so I'd be surprised if it can't do exactly what you need. StackOverflow appears to be pretty good with answering D3.js questions. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 13:49, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well, right there on the image is the web address http://www.nicva.org/article/who-is-in-charge-of-the-new-departments, which shows that the chart documents organizational changes by the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action. It's actually a screenshot; the chart at the page is interactive. Looking into that, we can see that it was made with javascript, however the chart itself is hosted on an Amazon web services platform, meaning we can't just go to the domain root and see if it's a company offering a product that might produce that. It relies on another script, however that one has been optimized so that there are no comments in it which would tell us anything about how it was created. It's also hosted on gstatic.com, which is a google content delivery network, so that doesn't tell us anything, either.

I would assume that this was created by software, though I could be wrong. I've been asked to make one-off applets similar to this one from scratch before, and it's really not that uncommon (though optimizing the code for such a project would be unlikely, as it makes the code much harder to change).

As to how you could replicate the chart as depicted in the image: use Inkscape, if you already have the data. If you're trying to produce an interactive version like the one displayed at the source, then I would suggest attempting to contact someone at the NICVA technology department, as their website seems to be maintained internally and trying to find out who made that chart. I know it sounds kinda dumb, but I've done the exact same thing several times before, and always gotten a positive response. I hope this helps. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:51, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

That is a Cosmograph.

It's apparently possible[1][2][3] to make them in Excel, but even having downloaded the file, I don't quite understand how it was done. ApLundell (talk) 21:59, 21 April 2017 (UTC)