Re: Designing a Better Font Selection Widget for use in Open Source Software

Sven Neumann <[email protected]> Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:04:58 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.video.gimp.devel,gmane.comp.kde.devel.general,gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.devel,gmane.comp.gnome.gtk+.internationalization,gmane.comp.openoffice.scripting
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hi,

"Edward H. Trager" <[email protected]> writes:

> ... 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.  

Interesting. The GIMP font selection scheme does certainly leave a lot
to desire. There are some good suggestions in Bugzilla, just waiting
to be implemented:

  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137624
  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150500

and somewhat related but more technical:

  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=168102

> The proposal also attempts to fully address aspects of
> internationalization related to font selection that I believe have
> been largely overlooked until now.

I don't think they've been overlooked. At least for the GIMP font
selection, the reason for the fact that the font selection is still
that simple, is lack of developer resources. Providing a common
framework might help to overcome this problem.

> Finally, the proposal suggests using a common XML configuration file
> which for storing font collection information.

Could this perhaps become part of fontconfig? We already have XML font
configuration there. Loading another XML file would slow down startup
further.

Sven