Large Type truncates its input at 10000 characters

[gimboland]

Summary

 

Large Type truncates its input at 10000 characters, even though it's perfectly capable of displaying considerably more than that on a modern screen.

 

Example

 

Here I've got a python script (not shown) generating 10005 "." characters, with an "M" every thousand characters (and "x/C" on 10s/100s); I'm directing that output to Large Type with default settings except that it's wrapping at 300 characters (wrapping at 50 characters has the same truncation but it's harder to see). As you can see, it truncates exactly at the 10th M, failing to display the final 5 'i' characters.

 

Context

I'm trying to use Large Type to display the contents of some file (essentially as a "cheatsheet"). It's quite long so to fit it on the screen I'm dividing it into 4 columns and setting Large Type's width to the max (400). Here's the output I get (with a version where all chars are mapped to "x", as the contents of the file are irrelevant):

 

 

The file is ~14000 chars, so I'm missing ~4000 here.

 

Now, those characters are perfectly legible on my monitor (3840x2160, 27"), and Large Type is now only occupying the middle 1/3 of the screen, so if the input had 30000 characters (say) without truncation, it would still be perfectly legible. Indeed, the font could even go a bit smaller and still be readable, and of course screens are only getting bigger — so maybe 50K even would be a reasonable limit.

 

I absolutely love Large Type for these kinds of quick display purposes: it's the best tool I've found for that. And as a programmer I fully get the need to limit the input size — but 10K seems too low on a modern screen, and makes Large Type no good for my particular use case. I've looked for alternative approaches; I can't find any. Large Type just does What I Want — except for the truncation.

 

System

 

MacOS 11.6.1

Alfred 4.6.1 [1274]

 

[Vero]

@gimboland Welcome to the forum.

 

Alfred truncates to 10,000 characters by design, and has always done. While it's interesting to see how you're using Large Type, this is outside the intended purpose of the feature.

 

Moving the thread to Feature Suggestion, as fellow Alfred users may have ideas on alternative ways to achieve what you have in mind

 

Cheers,
Vero