GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 547455
make sure single-character underlines are always a minimum number of pixels wide
Last modified: 2009-01-06 12:30:26 UTC
currently, the hig recommends against using letters like i or l as mnemonics, "because the underlines are too short to be noticeable". That seems like an unnecessary limitation, considering we've already to deal with a scarce set of 26 possibilities... I think it would be cool if pango could ensure that a single-character underline is always at least, say 5 pixels wide, by overshooting if necessary.
I can make sure the underline width is at least three times it's thickness. If that's not enough, I'll look into making it wider. /me cooks patch
I'm here to fix it, however: - Unlike claimed in the other bug, underline CAN'T be one pixel wide. It's always at least two already. With my default font, underline for i is 5 pixels. Those people using 8px font sizes can't complain. - To me it looks like the underline below i is more unnoticeable because it's really thin. I can make them thicker (for underline="low" mode which is what mnemonics use). - For ultra usability I suggest using an alternate color for the underline. Pango supports that already. This can be enabled for all menus and dialog buttons by default, and for menu bars, when alt is pressed. So, discuss. Otherwise /me making sure underline is at least 3 / 5 times wider than its thickness doesn't help much.
Matthias, please reopen if you want me to change anything in pango.