GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 160547
Reworking the font preferences dialog
Last modified: 2011-10-22 05:19:01 UTC
The font properties UI currently consists of two different dialogs, having a lot of reduntant widgets. Also, there was a proposal to add a new global "Document Font" setting. Given the growing number of widgets the UI should be revised. The issue was discussed here: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-December/msg00292.html Other information:
Created attachment 34525 [details] The "Fonts" tab of the proposed new dialog
Created attachment 34526 [details] The "Rendering" tab of the proposed new dialog
I have attached a mockup. As already pointed out on the list, the "Go to the font folder" button could also still go there, unless we find a better place for that.
Created attachment 39863 [details] [review] Proposed patch. Attached a patch which implements the new UI and removes the "Details" dialog. In the process of implementing this, I also split the xft2-sample-widget code into a seperate file and made many minor cleanups. I also added a "Jump to Font Folder" button to the dialog. The DPI settings are still there and not using percentage since it was not clear from the discussion whether we wanted to move it elsewhere and where it should go. Anyway, I think this can be treated as a seperate issue.
That rendering tab is still sort of a nightmare- I seem to recall there was a much better mockup for it somewhere, but I can't find it ATM :/
I am not fond of the dialog really. The only major difference seems to be the "Font Zoom" option menu. However, "Font Zoom" doesn't tell me anything about what it does. Why would the default font zoom ever not be 100%? Wouldn't you just want a larger or smaller point size for the font at that point? In your example, the fonts would be rendered at 21pt instead of 14pt for example? What does this actually do?
RGB order is the *least* relevant thing from "Font Rendering Details" - there are basically no systems (except for pivotable LCDs) that are not RGB. So, it definitely shouldn't be moved into the main dialog just to fill up space, or whatever. My general feeling for "Font Zoom" is that having two promiment ways to change the size of fonts is going to be confusing. If people want to change the size of their fonts, they probably will find it simplest to simply increase all the values.
I agree with comment #7. Preferences that influence other preferences that can directly be manipulated is a bad thing, imho.
As per the last few comments, I'm marking the patch as needs-work.
Suggested improvements to the 2.18.0 Font preferences, in ascending order of difficulty: * Provide a hint as to why anyone would choose "Grayscale". * Disable the "Subpixel order" controls when they're not applicable (i.e. when "Smoothing" is not set to "Subpixel"). * Turn the "Subpixel order" radiobuttons into a single option menu, with an icon+label for each option. * Move "Desktop font" to Nautilus's preferences where it belongs. * Combine the "Font Rendering", "Smoothing", and "Hinting" options into something that isn't a shambles. (Is "Monochrome" the same as "None"? Is "Best shapes" the same as "Slight"? Ugh.) * If the "Hinting" options still exist after that, turn them into a single slider, with four notches, and a single dynamic preview. * Abolish "Document font" and "Fixed width font", because while they're nice in theory, their non-obvious placement (relative to related options) almost inevitably requires document-displaying apps to have their own font preferences anyway (as demonstrated by Evolution, Epiphany, and Gnome Terminal). As compensation, give Yelp a "Set Font..." (not "Preferences", but "Set Font...") menu item and dialog. * Merge the "Font", "Menus & Toolbars", and "Theme" windows into a single "Appearance" window, so that people don't have to fap around in multiple windows to tweak different details of how their OS looks.
I haven't actually seen the 2.18.0 font preferences, but assuming they look like the 2.16.0 (etc, etc) preferences: > Combine the "Font Rendering", "Smoothing", and "Hinting" options into > something that isn't a shambles. (Is "Monochrome" the same as "None"? Is > "Best shapes" the same as "Slight"? Ugh.) Font Rendering - on the main page - is combining "Smoothing and Hinting" from the details page into something coherent to users. The four options on the main page are basically the only combinations that make sense, and if we presented the users with the raw Smoothing/Hinting options from the details page, they'd spend forever trying to find the right combinations. (And the same applies to Subpixel order. Anything other than RGB is wrong for 99.9% of all machines. The only exception is if you have some sort of rotatable portrait-mode display.) So, maybe you mean to suggest "Remove the Details page", but I think reworking the details page as you suggest is missing the point.
"Remove the Details page" works for me. :-) If "Subpixel smoothing" is set, the subpixel order can be calculated automatically based on the "Rotation" setting in "Screen Resolution Preferences" (or its multi-head successor).
I opened another bug report about Fonts preferences UI (see bug #491072). Sorry for the hitch, I was sure this bug was obsolete due to referred to old (pre-merge) capplet. Big changes are: * remove details dialog and provide only some basic settings for rendering * split fontbuttons in basic (applications and monospace) and extra (desktop, window title, documents): the items in second grup should individually checked in order to make them customizable, this to help users that simply want to use a single font in all places (for example switch from Bitstream to Liberation, or increase the size) Of course is perfectible and meybe bad designed :-) PS what we exacly like/want to make customizable in the UI?
*** Bug 491072 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 312395 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***