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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: KDefault font
From:       Christoph Niemann <cnieman () suse ! de>
Date:       2004-05-10 13:58:49
Message-ID: 409F8A99.1070804 () suse ! de
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Mikolaj Machowski wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Sometimes I can hear voices GNOME has better support for fonts than KDE.
> 
> We all know this is not true because both DE are using the same 
> underlying technology. But there is some truth in it.
> 
> 1. Kerning in Qt isn't perfect. KDE has little to do here. Qt4 promises 
>    some improvements here.
> 
> 2. Default font (helvetica) is horrible. It should be changed. Alas, 
>    personally have no idea.
> 
> 
> Second problem with font are numbers.
> Open Kate with empty file and just keep Enter. Note _whole_ status line 
> is redrawing to accomodate to various widths of numbers. There are few 
> solutions:
> 
> 1. The hardest - developers should be careful and put every changing 
>    number (like in Kate) in not flexible 'cell'.
> 
> 2. Find or modify one of existing fonts to make all numbers width equal 
>    (like TeX's Computer Modern).
> 
> 2a. Use special class for displaying some numbers - it will break
>    numbers for cells and display them as fixed-width (with most fonts it 
>    will probably look as broken kerning though).

I do think, only solution 1 is useful. Otherwise you will inevitibly run 
into other problems (such as refitting the status bar, when changing 
form '9' to '10' or '99' to '100'). Such things should be reported as 
bugs. This is true for those famous "jumpy" buttons, too. Buttons should 
  not change their size according to content. In particular, buttons, 
which repeatedly change contents (such as toggle between "Search" and 
"Stop") should use some fixed size.

Bumping and jumping interfaces do make you feel nervous.

Greetings,
Christoph

-- 
  | Christoph Niemann <cnieman@suse.de>
  | SuSE Usability Guild
  |
  | Contrary to popular opinion, the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'fact'.
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