I’ve just now noticed that the tags don’t work on certain symbols, at least for me. Bold will be bold, but if I throw in a symbol like the percentage sign B%ld, everything but the percentage sign is bolded. Forgive me while I test all the symbols:
qwerty!@#$%^&*()_+qwerty
Hmm, the @ # % and ^ symbols won’t bold.
odd.
They all look bolded to me.
They all look emboldened to me (OSX and Firefox).
Hmmm. I’m using Chrome, is it that?
I’ll start up Firefox and tell you what I see.
Yip. Bold for me, too. You may just be using a font where the difference between the regular and bold for those symbols is not that different.
I think you’d do better to put them side by side for testing, just in case there is a slight difference. OP, which column do you think is bold?
%%
@@
##
^^
Now lets compare it with your [noparse]
[/noparse] font:
%%
@@
##
^^
And, finally, let's try explicitly declaring a common serifed font:
%**%**
@**@**
#**#**
^**^**
I find that the middle is the hardest to tell.I see it in Firefox, too.
It’s not a big deal, just… odd.
One thing I want to test: @@
What I see is the first @ symbol is reduced in size, though not bolded, even though I put tags around it. I don’t see that with the others.
Thanks, Big T. I do see a couple of bolded symbols in your post. But only a couple. The second # symbol is bolded in the box after "Now lets compare it with your
font:" in your post, but none of the other symbols are. The second % symbol is also bolded in your post after "And, finally, let's try explicitly declaring a common serifed font:"
More importantly, this seems to be a problem on just my machine, and it's so minor that I don't care enough to fix it. I posted this thread to make sure that it was just me, and since it is, well, I no longer care. :) I'll just live with it.
Thanks for the help.You’re welcome. I think I may actually know what’s going on.
Let’s try one more test:
%%
@@
##
^^
If that looks right, then it’s just that the difference is too small for you to notice at a smaller font size.
Everything on the right is bolded, except for the @. It’s reduced in size as if it’s size=1. But, again, I think now that it is something to do with my font settings, and not the board, so I’ll just live with it instead of wasting too much time fucking with whatever I left my board settings at the last time I screwed with the fonts.
In short, I’m sure I could track down the problem on my end if I wanted to spend the time and effort, but I’m lazy and don’t, so screw it. I’m glad that the problem is just me though, and not a board-wide minor annoyance.
Again, thanks for the help.
For me it’s smaller but still quite obviously bolded, and not smaller like it would look if size=1 was used. Browser is Palemoon (an optimized version of Firefox).
@ @ @ @
regular, bold, size=1, bold size=1
BigT’s got it. I use Firefox, and the bolding of some symbols is just not apparent in the size of the font. But if I use ctl-mouse wheel to increase the font size, I can see the bolding easily.
I was messing around with some settings, and I discovered ways to make bolding better, so I thought I’d share it in this old thread.
Bolding works better if you have ClearType turned on. How you turn it on is different on different versions of Windows, so I’ll describe the easiest way I know.
On Windows XP and Vista, there is a PowerToy you can download from Microsoft. After installation, go to Control Panel -> ClearType Tuner. Not only can you use this to turn it on, but you can fine tune the results. Click the Start Wizard button, and follow the directions.
On Windows 7, you only have the wizard, which is available under the Display properties in the Control Panel, or in the Appearance and Personalization page under Fonts. Again, just do what it says: pick the one that looks best to you.
Still, ClearType can look bad on CRTs (i.e. non-flatscreens). If you find this is the case, then you can try another tool called GDITray. It uses the Linux method of displaying fonts called FreeType. The program can be found here. Just extract it to the folder of your choice, and run the program gditray.exe to install. You’ll see a little G in an icon on the right side of the taskbar. To choose different settings, right click on the icon, hover over the words “Preferences in Use”, and choose one of the options with gray in them (for CRTs). I personally like “No/Gray/Sat+16/Gamma.”
Both of these features fix the problem that makes bold letters not appear bold: the fact that the text is at too low a resolution. They do this by antialiasing, which means using color to simulate a higher resolution. For more information, see the Wikipedia article.
BigT:
Okay, now close your left eye and read the bottom row…
Crap. I gave you the updated version of GDItray, as it had the menu completely converted to English, rather than just the important stuff. But it doesn’t appear to work correctly. Go this page, and download gdi0870.zip, and install it as above. However, to make it come on every time you start Windows, you’ll have to drag the gditray.exe to your Startup folder on your Start Menu. And don’t worry about the one option that’s still in Japanese. It doesn’t really matter.
EDIT: 
at Rhythmdvl
Forgot the link: