Re: RFC font ui

>
> I have been pondering couple of issues that relate to our font UI that
> as user I am not happy with, and think should be addressed before the
> 2.6 release.
>
> 1. Handling of Absent Fonts in the UI
> -------------------------------------
> If I load a document that has text formatted with a font I do not have,
> and position the caret into that text the font combo will be set at the
> default font (in my case Times New Roman). This is rather misleading,
> particularly when the absent font is meant to be sans-serif. An obvious,
> but not entirely satisfying option, would be to have an empty entry in
> the list of the font combo and use that.
>
> Another, I think far more satisfactory solution, would be for the font
> combo to be able to dynamically insert a new row for the missing font.
> This way the user would actually know what font the document is using,
> and be able to formally use that font for changes to that particular
> document; I suspect this would be not be hard to do at least in the *nix
> font combo widget.
>

This sounds like a great idea. I agree it is doable and I fully support
someone doing it :-)

> 2. Size of the Font list
> ------------------------
> Currently the font list is huge. It displays every single usable font on
> the system. Many of these fonts have been installed by the distribution,
> and many of these are there to provide coverage for exotic languages
> that I do not use; as a user I do not want to see these fonts on the
> combo list. At the same time, I do not want to address this problem by
> removing those fonts from my system, as I want for these fonts to be
> used when I get a document that uses them.
>
> The font combo is filled using the graphics getAllFont() function; I
> would like to be able to customize what that function returns. I am
> thinking that on the *nix we could store a set of fontconfig rules that
> are to be used in compiling the all-fonts list, and the default rule
> would restrict the font list to fonts for the current locale. We would
> then have a preference "show all fonts" defaulting to 'off'. The normal
> user who would want to see all fonts in the combo could just tick that
> box, and the power user, wishing a finer control over what is shown,
> could provide her own set of fontconfig rules in the profile.
>
> I think this filtering should only apply to the combo; the font dialog
> could still be providing access to all the fonts (it's just a question
> of passing a boolean flag into getAllFonts).
>

The situation on unix has changed dramatically in the past 3 years. Unix
used to have just the few old fre urw's now we have tons. I agree with the
idea of preferentially limiting the fonts to current locale.

As a rule I like the idea of limiting preferences but some are desirable.
Which pane of the preferences would you put this in?

Cheers

Martin

> Tomas
>
Received on Sun Jan 28 10:19:28 2007