https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35538

--- Comment #94 from Michael H <[email protected]> ---
Adding comment here at the request of Robert Grosskopf. 
----------------
"font-weight" = 100,200,300,400,500,600,700,800,900 is far easier to translate
than a table of 9 names thin, light, semi-light, book, medium, demi-bold, bold,
heavy, black. 

"font-stretch" = 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900 is similarly
easier to translate than 8 names ultra-condensed, extra-condensed, condensed,
semi-condensed, normal, semi-expanded, expanded, extra-expanded,
ultra-expanded. (this is not listed in teh ODF or SVG spec, but to me is
intuitive and simplifies bringing the interface into a more compact view across
platforms)

"font-slope" = skew angle from vertical is expected as a numeric interface.

The Letter Font toggle buttons should be toggle through many, not either/or:

(B) (W) (D) (I) (U) (C) (A)  for 

B- weight (toggle through all 9 weights if available), 

W- width toggle through all 9 condensed/expanded options available

D- toggle through all minor stroke (caption/display) options available 

I- slope/style, (toggle through true italic, faux italic (0, 3.5 deg, 7 deg,
10.5, 14 deg) and backslant similar to oblique options.) Possibly provide
multiple slopes for true italic too. 

U- toggle through all underscore, strikethrough, overline options:
U,S,O,US,SO,USO, None. 

C - Toggle through all capitalization options (all caps, small caps, all small
caps, petite caps, small/petite caps, all petite caps, Title Case, Sentence
case, small case, ??)

A- toggle through ascender/descender extensions
#- toggle through numbering (oldstyle/Proportional, lining ,etc.)

bold, italic underscore, strike through, and Overline. Note that I should have
a 3rd value for backslant. 

--------



The Opentype (actually Opendocument) specification accepts 100, 200, 300, 400,
500, 600, 700, 800, 900 as weights, as well as "normal" and "italic" for skew.
Additionally "bold" for weight, and "italic" for skew will produce a 'faux'
font face by internally modifying the nearest cousin. These work in the program
if you manually edit the xml layer, but there's no interface to display or
select them. 

Frankly, Libreoffice is a dinosaur not supporting at least the 9 even hundred
numbered values in the interface.  These numbers do work in the stylesheets if
you manually type the opentype out, so the import filter  and rendering are
there and functioning, but the interface is still stuck in the 90s "four
options per fontname" thinking. Yet the interface designers continue to tweak
'dark mode' instead of substantive feature additions.

(note, I do like and rely on the "4 options" faux bold and faux italics, but
there should be more levels (at least 6 including light, but all 9 are common
today,) and I would appreciate control of a "faux" or opentype variable numeric
"weight" 0-999, and a "skew angle" more, but I'm not arguing for the loss of
that little control that is present in the current interface.

Additionally, without a 'skew' variable input that accepts backslants,  a
"backslant" option is needed in the interface (and in the OTF spec, which means
27 possible 'faces' for a font family, without considering (expanded/condensed)
spectrum for width, or (caption/display) spectrum for weighting of minor
strokes, or (lower/higher) x height spectrum for density/typography styles. All
of these are relatively simple to code (harfbuzz already has the ability) just
no support in the interface, except the XML doesn't support a skew number or
backslant.


John Kaufmann
Mar 9, 2025, 9:18 PM (9 hours ago)
to users, me

Michael, there's a LOT interesting in this comment.  Have you considered going
on the record in the bug 35538 comments
<https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35538>?  At least you
should be on the CC List.


John Kaufmann, [email protected]


I meant opendocument specification not opentype specification. (I'm working in
fontforge this year.) and the missing "backslant" I believe is present in the
svg spec, but misnamed "oblique" probably due to human languages.  (normal,
italic, oblique) are allowed. but in LibreOffice Italic and Oblique are
synonyms for italic, instead of slowwalk backslant vs fastwalk italic. But that
issue is SVG and not opendocument. 

The relevant opendocument attributes I mention or allude to are actually all
pass-thru from SVG spec, all of which have parallels in opentype. 
svg:ascent
svg:descent 
svg:slope (in the ODF spec, but I couldn't see it working in LO) 
svg:font-stretch
svg:font-style
svg:font-variant
svg:font-size
svg:font-weight

I didn't mention but relevant to the height in most languages that have
accents: svg:accent-height

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