GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 98922
[ui-review] Font preferences UI issues
Last modified: 2011-10-22 02:45:02 UTC
UI Review: - Frameless/bold HIG stuff - If Window title font is disabled from another place, then the label should be greyed out as well - similarly for terminal - Difference between Application and Desktop font still confusing ;) - Almost no difference for 3 out of 4 radio box examples -- perhaps only have one example box that showed current setting -- laying them out 2x2 makes it hard to see the difference --- perhaps 1x4? - No one knows what Subpixel smoothing is (I take issue with this comment, since the dialog specifies it's useful for LCD displays) -- Acroread's Cooltype preference dialog just gives you 'Sample A', 'Sample B' .. and gets you to choose one, instead of blinding you with jargon ;) - s/Resolution (dots per inch):/Resolution - have 'dpi' after spinner - could spinner be replaced with drop down menu? -- only a few ranges, right? -- Same comments apply to Hinting and Smoothing as above
*** Bug 99758 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
More on the subpixel smoothing: menthos recommends expanding the "(LCDs)" string to something like "(for LCD screens)", "(for LCD displays)" or similar (explicitness my own) so that people know better what this option does.
Suggestion for the font properties capplet, from bugzilla.ximian.com [also, taking the liberty of assigning this to Jody.] Instead of 4 different option boxes with examples, there should be two check boxes: "Smooth font edges" and "Optimize for LCD monitors", and one example box with actual live text that demonstrates the current options. Nothing selected means monotchrome in the current dialog, "Smooth font edges" means Best Shapes, and "Optimize for LCD monitors" means Subpixel Smoothing.
Those samples are being generated live. However, as evidenced on the Details page there are more than 2 options per dimension. Would could fold all of the different samples into just one, with a pair of option menus. I'm not convinced that improves the usability of things. Being able to _compare_ the settings is what makes the current approach useful. I'd rather not make the change to only one sample. I've made a few of the changes. - bolding labels on the details page - moving dpi after the resolution spinner Lets start from there.
Reopening since this doesn't seem to be pending new information from the reporter.
Another problem is that "slight", "medium", and "full" hinting all seem to do the same thing, at least on Debian. Plus, some of the combinations don't make any sense. Why, for example, would I want monochrome + no hinting? And there is no GUI way to activate the autohinter, which some people prefer. Third: the "Go to font folder" button should be moved to the main dialog because a) it has nothing to do with font rendering, and b) it is hard to find.