See bug #320066 for some heated background discussion about this.

Yeah, and as a part of that vocal minority, I'll note this as well:
 - bug 332820
 - bug 246538
 - bug 340644
 - bug 340646
 - bug 407851
 - bug 558763
 - bug 544734 <-- That was the one I filed
 - bug 469181
Are all duplicates of this one. Here's to hoping that this bug is the last iteration.

*** Bug 574916 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hi. I've read the above-mentioned heated discussion, and while finding some of it unnecessarily heated, I agree that this is a definite requirement. I'm in charge of IT at the company I work for, and have been trying to get people to use Linux, and offering Evolution as the ubiquitous Outlook replacement. Believe it or not, it really just comes down to "but can I still use Outlook". Openoffice does a reasonable job of satisfying most needs, but for the majority of people, if there's no Outlook, there's no computer. I can imagine Linux gurus screaming in the distance "What difference does it make? I've been using pine for years." The question is not really "why should we provide Outlook", but the reality we have to accept is "for whatever reason, that's what the people want".

I often write long documents directly within an email (as many others do in my environment), and the use of various formatting tools come very handy. If one can ask why it is necessary to be able to change fonts, then it can also be asked why we have the ability to select underlined, bold, italics, larger font, different colours, etc. After all, the font face is just another HTML tag (not quite the same technically, but just another "option" as far as the user is concerned).

You could argue why anyone would write a sophisticated document in an email instead of writing it elsewhere and attaching. My short answer would be "because it works better for me that way". The long answer is available upon request :-)

Even if there's no "clickable button" to select a font, I wish there was a way to directly edit the HTML. Quite the opposite, Evolution (or GtkHTML?) diligently removes any references to font selection. For example, my "signature" is an HTML file that contains font specifications, but all font tags are removed when the message is sent - while the size and colour tags remain, as well as tables and alignment settings.

Keep up the good work; after everything that's been done in this package, a font selection is really a no brainer. I am holding my breath until configurable fonts are supported in composing an email. Hmmmmmppphhhh.

Two thumbs up for the previous poster. One thumb down for Evolution not having this feature.

I hope it is implemented in the future.

Really agree that Evolution does need to recognise and use different fonts.  It is really common for me to be copying and pasting all kinds of formatted text from documents to emails and then back again.

It is really annoying that I am the only one at work using Linux, and that my emails are the ones with the fonts messed up.

Please can a smart person address this issue, obviously those of us who would really really appreciate the ability to use fonts, have no idea how to code or patch anything.  

We need the help of those who do.

Thanks
Matt Jones

PS Karmic with Ext4 makes Evolution much faster, so ta for that.

I'm an Evolution user over Years now. (Since the glory Ximian Desktop days...) And as long as I miss this feature, because all my html mails written on Evolution looks "ugly" by my (Outlook) recipients. (They render it in Times New Roman)

Yes indeed, there IS a strong need for this simple feature in Evolution. 
This discussion runs meanwhile over Years, and I can't understand why nobody has "fixed" it until now

Even in this Thread there is no real commitment from a developer to do it now...

Regards
Georg

*** Bug 610263 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I've read most of other topics about this issue, and i've seen that there's a gap between the users request for this feature that would make the e-mails looks "nicer" and the developer that don't think this is a real need.

I work in a organization that has very strong policies with CVI (Corporate Visual Identity), anything going out of the organization has to apply some basic rules about fonts (Georgia), colors and such things. Georgia is installed in most OS and a very small minority of people would see it different.

While using Ubuntu 10.4LTS and it's very good integration in the OS, i have to use other ways for the moment to send e-mails such as webmail or thunderbird (that i installed for this only reason).

So, giving the possibility of changing the font for composing e-mails in Evolution is not only about "it will look nicer for Outlook users" but it is also for users working in organization, company and corporation that have to apply some visual identity policies, and i'm sure that there's not only me in this situation.

My Employer is now enforcing a corporate signature which includes an Arial font.  I can create this signature, it looks right in the email before I send it.  But of course all the receiver gets is Times New Roman.

Please can we get the configurable fonts feature.  Or at the least send in Arial.

I'm a director of a London based technology company employing over 80 people and a number of my team use Linux, as do I. Although our company standard IT build of new laptops and desktops dictates Windows, I'd like to encourage more users to move to Linux as a preference for the obvious reasons of reliability and speed.

However, I too believe the absence of ability to configure the outgoing mail font is a terminal flaw in Evolution which simply prevents its adoption among business users - however having read the previous bug entries and heated discussions I don't think the reasons have been best demonstrated to the development community.

Let's start by what this problem isn't:
1. It's not a barrier to corporate mail signatures - an HTML signature installed properly is respected by those receiving outgoing Evolution emails, font and all.
2. It's not an overtly-aesthetic or cosmetic preference for users simply wanting to 'pretty up' their emails - at least not in a first step of resolving the bug.
3. It's not a readability issue for Evolution users when composing - though that may be valid, it can be resolved in preferences and with accessibility tools.

And now, what the problem is:
1. A fault which defeats the purpose of Evolution providing the option to send an HTML email since the recipient just receives block Times Roman which in most mail clients is indistinguishable from the rendering of plain text emails (arguably a buggy implementation of HTML tables, as in Thunderbird, is another red flag for HTML support, but while tables enjoy occasional use, text use is ubiquitous). 
2. A problem that has the quickest guarantee of getting Evolution outlawed by company bosses - when a lengthy mail trail is wrecked by one respondent sending a plain-text-like HTML email created by Evolution, it's seen as anti-social by colleagues at all levels who find the email content more impenetrable than well formatted emails. What makes this critical is as Evolution users we're sending out such mails and actively advertising the problem by confronting staff with this challenge. It only takes one executive or senior management to query why certain users are sending mails in this way (and believe me it's happened for staff who *wished* to stick to plain-text clients) for requests to be made to restrict Evolution's use as a mail client for company activity. It's the sort of thing that allows decision makers to have *that* view of Linux. 


So there you go, this is not an immature vote to pretty up emails, it's not a personal preference on usability, it's a genuine bug which threatens the use of a mail client which in so many other areas has overcome the bloated Thunderbird to be the premier client on Linux (I used both and migrated from Thunderbird six months ago). And to say this is not a bug, rather demands an explanation as to why the wonderful people who have - and are - crafting this application have already put support for HTML emails into the toolbar, and in popup dialogs upon sending an email, but never actually addressed whether the rendered HTML emails are actually showing up with any kind of useful implementation of HTML. 

They're not - simply configuring a default body font tag would be a sufficient minimum here, way before anyone has to actually build formatting toolbar panels and greater WYSIWYG support, things which lightweight web clients already do...

I'd happily make a donation based on any resolution.

Whew. The long, passionate, and well-reasoned messages are beginning to pile up here.

I'm curious if we can bump the priority of this as a result, or if developers are still looking for a reason this is necessary? 

For me, this bug still makes Evolution a non-starter, and it sounds like that's the case for many others as well.

(In reply to comment #12)
> I'm curious if we can bump the priority of this as a result

No, as priority in Evolution/GtkHtml bugs does not mean anything. The team is quite understaffed and there's more important things to work at.

I would like to voice my problems related to this issue. 1st of all I would like to say that I love Evolution and it's certainly the best mail / calendar / tasks / contacts client out there. 

Unfortunately at work, because of company marketing policy, we simply MUST format the mails in a certain way. I simply MUST use Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif as font. And I simply must use exact colors for some sections in the emails I'm sending. The issue went all the way up to the COO and the results was "If you can't format the mail, then you're going to use Outlook".

So... I am formatting the emails... and I'm writing them in HTML and sending them with a dedicated program that does not remove the formating in any way. They look perfect, much better than Outlook (or any WYSIWYG editor) would be able to do. 

Obviously I would love to not have to do this. A simple way would be to have an  Edit in external editor for HTML mails that DOES NOT CHANGES in any way the HTML. I could live with that very well...

What Mihai suggests makes sense. I appreciate the developers are busy and they don't have time to play with fonts, so I wish Evolution would at least allow the use of an external HTML editor, and send the message without touching anything in that HTML content, fonts, colours, sizes, etc.

I mentioned in my earlier post that Evolution strips out all FONT tags from HTML content (although it seems to leave everything else intact), but a later poster said: "an HTML signature installed properly is respected by those receiving outgoing Evolution emails, font and all.". This got me excited at first, but I couldn't get it to work. No matter how I do it, Evolution hunts those font specifications down and exterminates them.

Does anyone know of a way to slip the fonts in without Evolution noticing?

Yep! Use a different mail tool! That's what I did. </snark>

I too am trying hard to get people to use Evolution.  Today the first thing I was asked after I switched a small company over was - how come I cannot select fonts when I am sending HTML email?  I could only say that the feature request was already in, and hopefully coming.

There are many important reasons this feature is required, and the previous many, many, many posters to multiple bugs have described the need sufficiently, so I have nothing new to add there.

However, from the basic pov of increasing FOSS use, the goal of all of us, this seemingly small item is in user's eyes a basic requirement implemented by all other email clients they know.  Including this capability would go a long way to checking off a foundation element that would help increase the general acceptance of this otherwise great FOSS application.

I would like to add that I think Evolution Composer needs this feature for aesthetic reasons.  Ok, it is not a ground breaking feature, but it is something that makes reading emails pleasant, especially if you are reading a lot of emails.

To me an email is a document, like a letter, and the case for having various fonts in documents in word processing is well established at this stage.  In the past the place I expected to find boring plain text fonts was in web-based email clients like the old Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, and if you had a desktop mail client setup then you were lucky to be able to send emails with nice fonts.  Now it is turning out to be the opposite.  Most of the major web mail clients have the ability to use fonts in composing emails and Evolution does not, and for me this makes the experience of reading emails in Evolution far less pleasant.

If someone chooses to send me an email with a pretty font, then this was an aesthetic choice they made and I would like to be able to read their email in the way they meant it to be read.  Likewise I would like to be able to send my emails using and aesthetically pleasing font.  I am sure no developer likes hearing "the others have it so we should too", argument, but in this case the lack of this feature does make Evolution appear quit dated and I think most people would come to expect this feature to be available as a basic minimum.  I also think that in an office environment this is a feature that is used a lot.  At least in offices I have worked in, when newsletters and such are being sent around, various fonts are often used.

I don't think it would be necessary to provide support for every font installed on the desktop, but to allow for maximum compatibility you could support the basic web safe fonts (http://www.fonttester.com/help/list_of_web_safe_fonts.html) and I think most people would be happy with that.  I am sure that this feature would not rank high among the needed features of the client, but I think you would be surprised how much people expect this feature in a modern mail client.  Unfortunately as with a lot of software development, design and aesthetics are often left until last, often deemed unimportant.

We don't settle for boring plain text fonts in documents and we shouldn't settle for them in email.  Our emails should be just as beautiful as the letter you might type.  Otherwise we might be better off typing our emails in a word processor with pretty fonts and sending them as attachments.  Design and aesthetics are just as important in software as the code behind it.  I hope the developers will understand my point of view and considering paying serious attention to this feature.

Hi, I'll put in $650 towards getting this implemented.

We're a bootstrapping open source integrator (VirtualORGS.com), and just lost one of our first customers because of this deficiency.  This was their number one complaint.

If anyone else wishes to add some funds, please let this list know.

If anyone is going to work on this and would like to claim the bounty, please let me know.

Thanks,
Bill

I'll happily throw in $20.

Normally would go against what I believe free and open source to be, but this problem with Evolution fonts is driving me nuts, and making my emails the black sheep of the company.

I will paypal $50 to the person who fixes it, just to save me from buying a Mac and using Outlook.

Thanks
Matt

*** Bug 651228 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hi, the following link describes movement towards replacing Evolution in Ubuntu with Thunderbird.  

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/05/no-concrete-decision-taken-on-default-ubuntu-mail-app-for-11-10-but-errs-towards-thunderbird/

This would be a large step backward.  Evolution has the professional UI that non-technical users need.  Little things in Evolution are huge advantages for normal people, like being able to enter addresses on a single TO line instead of having to enter them in separate fields, and the ability to add an attachment by simply dragging a file anywhere on the email instead of having to drag it to one little hidden corner in the top right.  There a several other examples.

And yet... Evolution also has a small number of problems that limit it to technical users and turn off the much large set of normal people.  This font limitation is the largest of those issues.  We have lost customers over it.  If there are people on this bug that care as much about Evolution as I do, and are able to develop or influence development of resolution of this bug, which I am not, please move as fast as you can.  It will take some time to fix this, roll it out, and longer to get it included in the distributions that people are using.  

Thunderbird, an inferior product, already has a much larger user share.  It is time to get serious about preserving the value that Evolution offers before it is too late.

Sincerely,
Bill Stewart
Maintainer http://FreeOpenSourceSoftware.org
CEO http://CirrusComputing.com

(In reply to comment #23)
> Hi, the following link describes movement towards replacing Evolution in Ubuntu
> with Thunderbird.  

Completely unrelated to any technical discussion. Please go to forums for such kind of talk, Bugzilla is not the place for it. Thanks!

> Completely unrelated to any technical discussion.
 
I respectfully strongly disagree.  Less communication on this bug is not going to move it forward.

The primary reason that this bug (enhancement) has been outstanding for years is because many people don't see it as important. Since one can transmit any information one wants with a single font, being able to use more than one font seems peripheral and trivial.  They hear that it is important, but discount the input because they don't really *understand*.  

The link I listed provides information that the viability of Evolution as a whole is now being threatened on the desktop it is most used on, Ubuntu.  Fixing this bug would be the largest thing we could do to show that Evolution is keeping up with modern requirements.

We can debate this bug for another two years.  Then it won't matter, since almost no-one will use Evolution any more.  Somehow the people that really matter, those that can work this bug, need to understand this big picture.

If I was a developer exactly such noisy and technically useless comments would make me unsubscribe, not care, and feel demotivated. See bug 320066 comment 32.
And now let's please stop this, it's not leading anywhere.

Andre, you are not seeing the connection between this bug and viability of Evolution as a whole.  The developers are exactly the people that need to understand this dynamic.  Software does not exist in a vacuum independent of human beings and the world - it has a context.  And if people stop using it, it dies.

You can substantively disagree with any of the points I contributed, absolutely.  Or you can ignore my input entirely.  But please do not publicly announce that I should not provide this input.

We need to upgrade our HTML rendering engine to WebKit/GTK+ before any further composer enhancements are implemented.  This upgrade is on my to-do list for later in the year.  I don't know the timeframe of the upgrade yet -- it could easily balloon into another six month project.

Continuing to overstate the importance of this feature request isn't going to make it happen any faster.

What Ubuntu chooses to do with Evolution is of no consequence to the development team, since Ubuntu doesn't participate in Evolution's development.

Well it's good news to hear that there are some eyes on this feature and there is a plan to get it implemented at some stage. Thanks.

(In reply to comment #27)
> But please do not publicly announce that I should not provide this input.

Again: Feel free to provide your input, but not in a technical bugtracker, as it is simply not technically related. Bring this to forums instead. Thanks.

> Continuing to overstate the importance of this feature request isn't going to
make it happen any faster.

Matthew, with sincere respect to the work you do, this is exactly the point I am trying to make - the conviction that this feature is "overstated" is one of the key reasons Evolution use is declining.  With the industry leading SCRUM method of software development, it is precisely a user representative that prioritizes all feature requests.  Appreciation of that user role appears to be what is missing here, and is where I am trying to provide some user balance.

Since we don't have a SCRUM like process at place here, this bug is exactly where this input should be posted, so developers can hear the user feedback and properly gauge the priority they should apply.  If the history of software development tells us anything, it is that developers that shut their ears to annoying user input usually find that their software not being used, sometimes very abruptly and permanently.  As a huge proponent of Evolution, following this bug for some years now, I greatly fear that is what is happening here.  We have customers that have rejected our entire solution because they don't want to be limited to a monotone voice with their email.  I respectfully suggest you should pay very, very, very close attention to this kind of input when you judge the importance of this feature.

Thanks for providing the information you did.  I understand the dependency you describe.  Of course I also understand there are limited developer resources to apply to this project, which is why a few months ago I offered to contribute to a cash bounty.

*** Bug 566172 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 694090 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hi,

Is there any plan for having configurable font in evolution?

Thanks for information /Deepak

It's all written in this bug report, and if there is no assignee or "I am working on this" in a bug report, then nobody works on it and patches are welcome. Generally. :)

OK :) so I know. I am new to this reporting tool so ...

Seems no one is currently working on it.

Thanks for information /Deepak

Adding myself to this bug as I'm also trying to use Evolution in corporate environment and got stuck on this bug now. Reverting to Thunderbird for the moment.

I last tried evolution with mapi about 3 years ago and gave up as it was so painful.

Now it at least manages to download my mail and only hangs or mysteriously crashes a few times a day.

But the killer is that I am unable to set my corporate mandated font on my signature - evolution stupidly removes font face from font tags and from styles.

Thus I am forbidden from using evolution - not at the hands of over zealous IT in MS pocket, but at the hand of gnome/evolution developers.

In irony, the reason gnome screensaver settings are not configurable is because corporate customers want it that way. I wish the same reason applied to evolution bugs.

I'll be back in a couple of years to see how things have changed, and in the meantime I will keep using Outlook 2007.

The double irony is that if you properly supported fonts I would be helping to debug the hangs and the crashing.

Every day for at least five years I use both Evolution and Thunderbird. I have lots of filters in both of them.

Thunderbird continues down an amateur path, bright and lively, fun for techies, hard for normal people, and at least in my experience buggier and buggier over the years.

On the other had, Evolution was once "the most widely used FOSS software in the world".  It remains enterprise quality, with big buttons and intuitive interfaces, still the best FOSS solution for normal people in organizations by far.  And, despite being continually mocked for its insides, it has been getting better and more solid with each release.  

What these years of end-user feedback are saying is: "I'm reporting from the outside world that this is *much* more important than it looks."

If FOSS means anything more than just having open code, then the great opportunity should not be lost another day:

   Normal people need fonts.  Evolution is by far the best 
   solution for enterprises, so if it had fonts it would be
   used much more widely.  The more widely used FOSS is,
   the sooner we obtain a cosmic win^win.  And since email is
   so fundamental, there is so much greater benefit from its
   use in enterprises than with *any* other FOSS application.

There is *unusually* large holistic, strategic, and long-term opportunity for FOSS if this issue of overriding importance to the vast majority of normal human beings were to be addressed.

Please?

Does any evolution developer know how much time would be involved in implementing this feature? Would 20 hours be enough?

I want to pick this up and find a solution for what seems to be an issue people care about.

This has been open for no less then 6 years.

This seems to be a rather trivial feature, that all other composers are offering except Evolution. Even better; any program involved with sending any kind of message whatsoever has a feature to alter the appearance of that message.

Not being able to set a default font is archaic.

** In general, please avoid "me too" / "+1" comments not adding anything new to a bug report. They only create notifications someone might have to read. Thanks. **


(In reply to Rainmaker52 from comment #41)
> This has been open for no less then 6 years.

Irrelevant... Would it be better if I closed this as WONTFIX so it is not "open for no less than <random time period since report was created>" anymore? Guess not. So it stays open until you provide a software patch, as other developers (if existing) don't consider this important enough to stop working on other things.

> This seems to be a rather trivial feature

I wouldn't say so. But it seems you have investigated the codebase and architecture already to be able to make such a judgment, hence your specific technical hints are welcome how you came to your conclusion.

> that all other composers are offering except Evolution

"Everybody else is doing it" isn't an argument in itself (did you really test every single other composer out there on every operating system? I'm impressed).

This had been added for 3.37.2 development version.