Default text size - is this still useful?

[FayCross]

Is there any purpose to having this option in the editor now that responsive text is there? Or should we hide it if responsive text is checked? If responsive text is checked and text size is changed to one of the larger options, the main text stays the same but the spacing of things like buttons on footer bar goes very odd. If responsive text is off and text size is changed then the main text does change size but the spacing of things still goes a bit odd.

I think we should remove this and recommend people use CSS if they want to change text size across the project. Generally, I find that when people try to change the text size in projects away from the default or responsive sizing that a theme uses, it ends up looking bad anyway.

If it's agreed that we should remove it, what's the best way to do this? If it's deprecated in normal way, all projects created before the change will have the deprecated warning next to this field which isn't ideal (as it will be on the first page you see when you edit a project). If it's just removed then this could also cause problems.

Thoughts? @ronm123 @torinfo @ingedonke

[ronm123]

@FayCross I guess you've probably also had people that are confused by it and assume that it works in tandem with responsive text or at least expect it to work that way. I don't think we can simply remove it though. I think hiding it if responsive text is on is probably a good idea and perhaps adding a tooltip to Default Text Size to explain that it is an outdated features, doesn't work with responsive text and may be deprecated in future. The other thing I have wondered about previously is changing that option so that it uses responsive rather than fixed sizes.

[torinfo]

@FayCross What if we change the deprecation functionality in such a way that the item is only shown if the value is different from the default?

That would also work better for other deprecated items that are in groups I think.

[JMarco27]

When I author in XOT, I generally don't select responsive text, because it often seems to create problems with text size, for example creating irregular text size between gaps in Gap Fill. I tend to go for default text size 12, and then I test it out with 14, and if it looks OK in 14, I choose that. (It may be that issues with responsive text that I had 5 years ago have now been fixed.)

I suppose one question is whether learners have "a right to view learning content on a mobile phone" rather than the use of a minimum, tablet-size screen which I recommend. Jonathan Smith