Most of the UI for UE is too small for me. Also, the UI text is smaller than almost all other Windows programs. Is there a way inside UE preferences to change the UI fonts? I don't want to change Windows global settings, since they work fine for other programs and for the Windows UI.

Thanks for the detailed answer. For UE Version 26.20.0.46, is there a way to change the font in menus and submenus? If they are determined automatically, then we may have a problem due to the fact that new computers tend to have ever greater resolution on the same-sized screens.

My main computer screen is 1920x1080 in only 14 inches. We've come a long way from my first Windows computer, which was 640x480 in the same 14 inches. Some products (like Registrar Registry Manager) have gotten tinier and barely visible UIs while most have compensated for the increased pixels per screen dimension.

I am not using 96 dpi, or even 125%. I am using the Windows default 150% size. I have found from previous experience that 150% works best for me for most applications. For some reason, though, UE seems to use a very small text size in its menus and dialogs. Relying on Windows to do the right thing in UE is unfortunate, especially in a programmer's editor that is claimed to be customizable.

The problem with following your instructions for changing the font in Windows menus globally is that it can easily make most menus difficult to read. I know this from experience. My last experiment doing this using WinAero resulted in weird results and finally in corrupting my default Windows font Segoe UI. Since Microsoft does not make that font available for download, and most other fonts don't seem to fit into captions and titles properly, I had to wait until I needed to buy a new Windows computer to obtain the original Segoe UI font set to fix my computer's menus. I won't try Windows menu size or font changing ever again.

As I said, I'm happy with my menu and dialog text size in other applications, but they seem smaller inside UE. Possibly it's just an illusion due to context, but in any case since you only support Windows menus and dialogs I won't be able to use UE further.

Sorry for the length of this reply.

"David, why do you write several times 'you' "

The first time I wrote 'you' ("The problem with following your instructions") was not a problem because you had actually given me instructions.

The second time ("in any case since you only support Windows menus and dialogs") was a mistake in using 'you' to mean the company that maintains UE (IDM Computer Solutions, Inc). The main problem was using this community (user-to-user) forum as a support forum, for which I humbly apologize. I felt it was better than submitting a bug ticket, particularly since there might have been a UE option to do what I wanted, in which case there was no bug in the product (I see now that there is indeed a bug in the product, caused by relying on Windows to handle menus and dialogs). My use of 'you' meant the company through its support forum.

I hope that explains why I used 'you' twice, once incorrectly.

"In my point of view all Windows application should use the Windows desktop settings."

This is fine in principle. But in practice Windows does not always do the same thing for all applications as it should. It did a great job at Windows 3.1, and most applications used the API with no problem. But Windows 10 is so complicated that problems often arise for the simplest of behaviors. In particular, its handling of different screen resolutions and magnifications is problematic (perhaps one source of problems is that the term 'resolution' should be defined as the number of pixels per inch or centimeter, vertical and horizontal, but Microsoft and the monitor manufacturers have defined it as the total number of pixels shown on the screen, vertical and horizontal).

"The problem is that starting with Windows 8 Microsoft decided to introduce new GUI settings no longer using the older window metric settings and so a Windows GUI chaos emerged."

I think you have hit the nail on the head here. Windows, like many other important products, tries to maintain back compatibility as it extends into new functionality. The result is bugs, which are low in priority for a company that believes that profitability lies in supporting new devices and technologies.

"Then more and more applications developed natively for Linux were ported to Windows not using native Windows GUI settings at all, i.e. not using the Microsoft GUI libraries, but using other libraries like Qt or Java."

Indeed, you are certainly correct. Many text editors are constructed using such technologies and libraries, usually with some success.

A good example of Windows failure for use in text editors is the Caret. I'm not sure that Windows should have ever promised to display Carets (editing position markers) at all, but they took on that responsibility. For many years, Windows had a design flaw that permitted the on/off flashing rate of the caret to be set by the user, but only within a certain range; there was no provision for turning the flashing off and displaying the caret steadily. At the longest duration setting, Windows would leave the caret on for perhaps several hours, then turn if off completely for several hours. Even though this is clearly a bug, Windows kept this behavior as standard for many years. Text editors that truly cared about being flexible would avoid using the Windows caret, even though it was available. They would instead display their own caret graphic. In addition to fixing the inability of Windows to display a steady caret, it provided other opportunities: changing the width and height of the caret line, or making it a rectangle or other shape.

Today, Windows is routinely used for menus. Yet many programs display their own menus (particularly within pages rendered using a browser engine). Many text editors (but not UE) support changing the font used in menus, which allows the editor to correct the limitations inherent in text display used in the Windows-provided menu system.

I'm not interested in arguing these issues beyond stating my opinions. I'm happy with my own beliefs (I have 40 years experience as a professional software engineer) and have the freedom to choose which text editor I use for programming. Unfortunately, that freedom is not sufficient. Although I have evaluated 14 text editors, I have not been able to find a single editor (open source or proprietary) that is mostly problem-free, supports full customization, and whose developers respond quickly to problem and extension requests.

The closest I've come to finding a great text editor is the very old Notetab Pro, which is still sold but no longer maintained. It has horrible problems with UTF-8, the de facto current standard in character encoding. It cannot do any specialized "intelligence" operations, such as visiting or showing the definition of a function name at references inside program code. But it does some convenient operations that no other editor can do (not even Emacs), such as working with "outline" files, which contain (in-band) indexed and named pieces of text.

"I would be interested in what are your current Window metric settings."

I have attached the file. I hope it reveals some misconfiguration.

"Have you tried what happens on changing properties in the shortcut used to start UltraEdit regarding to DPI settings?"

No. I was too lazy to do that level of experimentation, sorry.

"I am sure we can together without or with IDM support solve the small font size issue in menus satisfactory for you without effecting other applications if you are interested in a solution."

You are very kind, but before using so much of your time, I need to decide that I want to use UE as opposed to (say) VSC. The problem is that I don't recall whether UE can do 'intelligence' operations, such as listing all PHP or JavaScript functions in a project, or instantly showing the function definition for a function reference, or autocompleting references such as "CLASS::NAME", "METHOD->NAME", or syntactically recent long identifiers. I know it can do syntax coloring for many languages, but I don't need syntax coloring at all.

It's really hard to choose a text editor, because although it's so basic and important, all existing editors are either limited in their features and customizations, or hard to use (Emacs). Yet I'm stuck with no handling of UTF-8 until I can choose a new text editor I can live with.

Before I go ahead and experiment with what you've done for me (thank you), is there any problem that I actually run Windows 10 Home rather than Windows 7? I have never used Windows 7, having skipped past it for some reason. I don't want to import into my Registry if anything changed between Windows 7 and Windows 10.

Thank you for verifying all this. I'll report on my experiments when I have time to do them. Thanks in advance.