Re: [Gimp-developer] Designing a Better Font Selection Widget for use in Open Source Software
Hi Edward, thanks for you proposal. On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 01:36:45PM -0400, Edward H. Trager wrote: 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. Speaking as a user here, I'm not sure if your proposal of a drop down is really what solves the problem here. I really like the fact, that the fonts are categorized. That is something which I really miss in the font selection dialogs currently. If a user has installed a motherload of fonts, he mostly has to scroll and scroll and scroll to pick a font. Using a drop down widget has the disadvantage, that I still have to scroll like mad to pick a font, even if they are categorized. I'm able to find the font much faster, but picking a font is cumbersome as it is now. In fact, the only dialog which I endore is the font dialog from Apples Mac OS X. You still have to scroll to pick a font, if there are lots of fonts in one category, but it minimizes the effort. Well, just my 2 cents to your proposal :) Greetings, -- Roman Joost www: http://www.romanofski.de email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] pgp7DqfMmwmPB.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [Gimp-developer] Designing a Better Font Selection Widget for use in Open Source Software
Hi, Roman Joost [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I really like the fact, that the fonts are categorized. That is something which I really miss in the font selection dialogs currently. If a user has installed a motherload of fonts, he mostly has to scroll and scroll and scroll to pick a font. Using a drop down widget has the disadvantage, that I still have to scroll like mad to pick a font, even if they are categorized. I'm able to find the font much faster, but picking a font is cumbersome as it is now. Just a hint, in case you or someone else didn't notice yet: If you know the name of the font, you can limit the fonts being displayed in the dropdown list using the text entry next to the font button. Sven ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Designing a Better Font Selection Widget for use in Open Source Software
Hi, Akkana Peck [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sometimes I really miss having a font selector dialog which I could resize to show a long list, so that I could scan through more quickly without needing to scroll so many times. Why don't you just open the Fonts dialog then? Sven ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Designing a Better Font Selection Widget for use in Open Source Software
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 ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Designing a Better Font Selection Widget for use in Open Source Software
On 9/27/05, Edward H. Trager [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... 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 http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode/fontdialog/ As a user, this sounds like a very awesome proposal, and if implemented, would revolutionize font GUIs for users. I don't know whether it could cause a problem with Usability (e.g. Text to Speech systems) though... Just a note (and yes, I'm nit-picking), but there is no such thing as 'a Chinese pangram'. Chinese uses individual characters for every word (AFAIK), so you'll just have to choose some sample text that is representative of the language, or make some up. IIRC, Japanese has an alphabet, though, and Chinese has a sort of 'proununciation' alphabet (but that's seperate). -- ~Mike - Just my two cents - No man is an island, and no man is unable. ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Designing a Better Font Selection Widget for use in Open Source Software
Nice proposal. A lot of apps could benefit from a good shared font selector -- it's not just an issue of one app, as you point out. I love the idea of font groupings. I don't mind editing an XML file, but I'm sure it wouldn't take much to whip up an app to help people customize their downloaded fonts, compared with the rest of the work involved in the proposal. Tooltips over menus can be really annoying, because while they're showing more information about one entry they're preventing you from scanning all the other entries. You can move the mouse outside the menu, but it's a shame to have to mouse in to scroll, then quickly mouse out before the tooltip blocks the list you're trying to read. Please consider making that part optional, or skipping it. One more UI issue you don't address: the length of the font list can be a problem, especially if you have a lot of fonts installed. The current GIMP font list (and your proposal looks similar) pops up as a combobox that shows, on my system, 9 fonts at a time. Exploring the whole list through this small window takes a long time and a lot of clicking. Sometimes I really miss having a font selector dialog which I could resize to show a long list, so that I could scan through more quickly without needing to scroll so many times. ...Akkana ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Designing a Better Font Selection Widget for use in Open Source Software
Hi, Edward H. Trager wrote: I welcome the community's suggestions and criticisms -- One easily overlooked feature which I consider to be most important is keyboard support. In many Windows apps (and OpenOffice), I can type the first few characters into the font selector combo and that's usually enough to narrow it down to the font I'm going to use. This feature makes an *incredible* difference to working efficiency. All the best, -- Alastair M. Robinson ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
