GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 130561
[UI-REVIEW] Move Font-settings to View-menu/remove them entirely
Last modified: 2021-06-02 09:06:49 UTC
I don't think that the font settings currently displayed at the top of the main window deserve such a prominent position. Actually the only font-related setting for which I can personally see justification to exist at all is the size of the displayed characters. Size-selection I think should be changed in the following ways: - The size-selection in the main window should be removed. - The default size for the characters should be the users preferred default font size. - The only interface for changing the size of the displayed characters (appart from shortcuts) should be the already existing "Zoom In"/"Zoom Out" menu items supplemented by an additional "Normal Size (Ctrl+=)" menu item. - The zoom menu items should increase/decrease the character's size not by single points but in bigger steps similar to how zooming works in epiphany. - Ideally size changes should be restored whenever gucharmap is restarted. As for the font-selection I think it should just be removed entirely. gucharmap seems to be doing a pretty good job in choosing a font with which to display the individual characters (i.e. the setting seems to only select a preferred font; if there are characters missing in the selected font it automatically displays those characters in a different font). So I don't think there is a need for a special setting. Instead the font the user selected as his preferred one in the desktop settings should just be reused. With the font-style/-variation (i.e. italic/bold) it's similar. The main functionality of gucharmap I think is to provide a way for users to select special characters to be inserted into a document. I don't think gucharmap should try to become (or even only give the appearance of beeing) a generic font viewer.
> - The default size for the characters should be the users > preferred default font size. I think that's too small for a character map. It starts with default size + 50% currently. At least that takes the default size into account. > - The zoom menu items should increase/decrease the > character's size not by single points but in bigger steps > similar to how zooming works in epiphany. It currently increments by MAX(size/12,1) points, not 1pt, so the increment is larger when the font is larger. What does epiphany do? > gucharmap seems to be doing a pretty good job in choosing > a font with which to display the individual characters Pango does that, see bug 119268 and bug 105553. Once pango's fallback mechanism can be disabled, I think gucharmap will be pretty useful as a font viewer. I'm not really set on what I want to do though. There are other considerations, like how the font selection would work with the new combo box, and stuff.
> I think that's too small for a character map. It starts with > default size + 50% currently. At least that takes the > default size into account. Ok, as long as the system size is taken into account I don't think the default size is all that important (though personally I slightly prefer my system size ... restoring the size used the last time would help here :) ). > It currently increments by MAX(size/12,1) points, not 1pt, > so the increment is larger when the font is larger. What > does epiphany do? I see ... personally I still think the zoom steps are still to small and think steps similar to what Epiphany uses would be more appropriate. Epiphany defines the available zoom levels like this (in lib/ephy-zoom.h): zoom_levels[] = { { N_("50%"), 0.7071067811 }, { N_("75%"), 0.8408964152 }, { N_("100%"), 1.0 }, { N_("125%"), 1.1892071149 }, { N_("150%"), 1.4142135623 }, { N_("175%"), 1.6817928304 }, { N_("200%"), 2.0 }, { N_("300%"), 2.8284271247 }, { N_("400%"), 4.0 } }; > Once pango's fallback mechanism can be disabled, I think > gucharmap will be pretty useful as a font viewer. I'm not > really set on what I want to do though. There are other > considerations, like how the font selection would work with > the new combo box, and stuff. As for "the new combo box, and stuff" I'm not sure what that means or if this is related (any bugs where this is discussed?) However, personally (and I'm only trying to give you my opinion on this) I think it would be a *huge* error to try and make gucharmap be both a character selector and a font viewer at the same time. From a usability perspective I strongly believe this is doomed to fail! It would also remove the context in which most of my (to-be-)proposed UI-changes are meant to exist and put a serious damper on my interest of seriously reviewing gucharmap (yes, you might consider this a good thing ;-) ). I'd still try to report those things that I have already identified and that still make sense, of course. However, a idea of a combined character selector/font viewer seriously conflicts with any usable interface that I can think of for either of those and therefore there's not much I can do about it. (Sorry if the above paragraph sounds pathetic. I'm not trying to make anyone feel pity for; but just trying to tell you how I feel about such a change.) Hmm... have you ever considered creating a separate application for font viewing that perhaps shares some of the code (or even a library) with gucharmap?
Re-assign to default owner and QA.
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