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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Designing a Better Font Selection Widget for use in Open Source
From:       James Richard Tyrer <tyrerj () acm ! org>
Date:       2005-09-30 1:21:25
Message-ID: 433C9315.4060904 () acm ! org
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Edward H. Trager wrote:
> Hi, everyone,
> 
> This message is an open letter to:
> 
>  - Gnome Desktop developers
>  - KDE Desktop developers
>  - OpenOffice.org developers
>  - Gimp developers
>  - Inkscape developers
> 
> ... regarding a proposal for an improved font selection drop-down
> widget that would be ideal for use in professional-quality Open Source 
> word processing, desktop publishing, and graphic design programs
> such as OpenOffice.org, Gimp, Inkscape, and similar
> programs.  
> 
> The proposal suggests a design that is particularly 
> applicable where users require a streamlined and intuitive interface
> for selecting multiple fonts from large font collections present on
> the user's machine.  The proposal also attempts to fully address 
> aspects of internationalization related to font selection
> that I believe have been largely overlooked until now.  Finally,
> the proposal suggests using a common XML configuration file which
> for storing font collection information.
> 
> To see the full proposal, please see:
> 
>     http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode/fontdialog/
> 
> The rest of this email provides a synopsis of the proposal.
> 
> Synopsis
> ========
> 
> Although important Open Source desktop software has advanced 
> rapidly in the last few years and now easily rivals and in many
> cases surpasses commercial equivalents in terms of functionality 
> and ease of use, the font selection drop-down widgets and font
> selection dialog boxes in many programs still lack a number of
> important features.  (This is also true among commercial software
> too, but that is not our concern here).
> 
> First, many programs do not provide adequate font previews
> at the stage where the user is choosing from a 
> (now-a-days usually very long) drop-down list
> of available fonts.  Even when font previews are provided, they
> are often limited to a preview of Latin glyphs and thus provide
> no information about the appearance of non-Latin glyphs for, say,
> Chinese, Thai, or Arabic users trying to pick fonts for their language.  
> 
> Secondly, a very long list of alphabetically-sorted font names
> is not ideal.  Fonts need to be organized and presented to the 
> user in logical groups, as is done in Apple OS X (where they are
> called "collections").  
> These groups can and should be both system-defined
> and user-defined.  System-defined groups would include font categories
> like "Sans", "Serif", "Monospace", "Recently Used", and "Chinese".  User-defined
> groups might include categories like "Script", "Black Letter", "Funky", or
> "Fonts for the new company brochure".
> 
> The proposal at http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode/fontdialog/
> addresses how these goals can be met.  Implementation of the proposed
> font selection widget at the GUI toolkit level (i.e., in GTK+ and in KDE)
> along with an XML-based configuration scheme standardized across 
> toolkits and desktops would do much to help create a more intuitive and 
> more uniform user experience on Linux and related Open Source platforms.
> 
> I welcome the community's suggestions and criticisms --
> 
> -- Ed Trager
>    maintainer of "Unicode Font Guide For Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems"
>    http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode/fontguide/
>  
> 
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> 
> 

ARGH!!

<<
Professional graphic artists might additionally like to be able to find 
out which fonts were available in "extra light" or "extra bold" forms. 
Perhaps this could be an additional display option (second row in figure 
on the left). I am not sure whether such information is encoded in font 
files in a consistent manner or not. Other font styles such as 
"condensed" also exist, but again I am not sure whether such information 
is encoded in font files in a consistent manner that could be enumerated 
by software reading the files.
 >>

First problem:

Devise a method of dealing with the multi-axis qualities of fonts.

THEN perhaps your ideas are the second step -- the solution to the 
second problem.

Fonts come in different widths as well as different weights.  These are 
linearly independent as is Regular vs Italic|Oblique|Slanted.  That is, 
I can have "Helvetica Condensed Light Oblique" (not sure if it really 
exists) -- there are three parameters and they can be changed 
independently.  Worse, it is possible that some fonts will have an 
additional attribute.

Although you can make a list of common weights and a list of common 
widths, there is no complete list so it is always possible that a font 
with either a width or a weight that has never been seen before will be 
installed on the system.

And it gets worse.  TrueType and Type1 do not use the same definition of 
Family.  That is, "Helvetica Narrow" Type1 has a family name of 
"Helvetica".  However, "Arial Narrow" TrueType has a family name: "Arial 
Narrow".

So, there are real problems.  Perhaps FontConfig can deal with some of 
them, but they are real and they need to be fixed first.

-- 
JRT
 
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