Rendering the cataclysm world/map using a different font than the hud/menus

There has always been an issue that players struggled with when it came to cataclysm: They could either have a nice readable interface, or they could have a nice square game world. This was understandably so; the game used a single font for the interface and the world because its trying to render it in (or as?) a traditional console.

The problem:

1: If you are a tileset user then you probably have nice square world-view and a readable HUD. However, the map uses the same font as the HUD and thus is probably rectangular.

2: If you are not a tileset user and you wish to have a square world-view, then your HUD/menus will also use square fonts. As we all know those are very hard on the eyes when it comes to reading lists and text.

The tiles version partially does what im thinking of here, it allows you to render the world with a preferred tileset and then have a HUD that uses a different font. This is a step in the right direction but isnt the perfect option just yet.

My suggestion:

Would it be plausible to break the game renderer into 2 separate sections that used different fonts? One section would include the world and the map, and would preferably use a square font of some sort. The other section would be for the HUD, menus, popups, warning messages, and anything that contained text really. (Including the container on the side of the map with the key.)

Benefits:
1: This would allow ASCII users to have square tiles in their world-view and on their map, but would keep the HUD nice and readable.
2: This would also give Tiles users the option to have a square-font map.

Drawbacks:
1: Probably requires a huge overhaul in the way the game renders.
2: Probably wouldnt retain true legacy console compatibility, assuming that cataclysm still has that.

This is a nice idea!

This might be easy to do with SDL, but I’m not sure if curses would support that.