Hello all!
Recently I have been asked to make a change to Culmus fonts, which would
introduce a serious backwards incompatibility. I couldn't decide on it, so
please express your opinion.
The problem is that the size of Culmus fonts is roughly 20% larger that Windows'
fonts. This means, that when you open a Windows document written in David font,
all letters in Linux turn out to be 20% larger. Therefore, Shoshannah asked me
to reduce the default size of the fonts appropriately, to make them similar to
Windows. Technically, this is a very easy thing to do - but there is a catch:
1. If I make the change - migrating documents from Windows would be much easier,
but all Linux users will have their documents broken and will have to readjust
all the font sizes - this hurts.
2. On the contrary, if I keep the size - migrating every single document from
Windows would require reducing manually all fonts to smaller sizes - and this
hurts too.
3. If I keep the size, and someone decides to fork the fonts (this is a very
easy thing to do, and no typographic skills are required), the exchange of
documents between users of different word processors would be a nightmare.
Another point is that Windows fonts are heterogeneous. Right now, while
Microsoft Arial, Times New Roman and David are 16% smaller than Culmus ones,
Guttman fonts are just 2% smaller than Culmus. If I make the change - Arial, TNR
and David would be almost similar - and they constitute the vast majority of
documents (still, there will be small differencies, notably in the line
spacing). But instead Guttman fonts (which are not used that extensively, as far
as I guess) would be replaced in Linux by 13-14% smaller fonts.
Too bad, King Solomon is not among us...
Best regards,
Maxim.
P. S. The bug description at OO bugzilla:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=28239 (and there is a
screenshot).
P. P. S. Please keep this discussion on the Ivrix-discuss list
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