Draining the font swamp

[Denis Jacquerye]

On 5/25/07, Matt Zimmerman <mdz at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 25, 2007 at 01:31:08PM +0200, Jan Claeys wrote:
> > Op zaterdag 19-05-2007 om 12:34 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Matt
> > Zimmerman:
> > > There has been some confusion and dissatisfaction over the treatment
> > > of fonts in Ubuntu for a some time now, and no common understanding of
> > > how to improve the situation.  I spent a little time thinking about
> > > this today, and would like to present some questions whose answers I
> > > hope will help us to make some progress.
> >
> > My problem with fonts in Ubuntu is the same problem/dilemma that I had
> > with fonts on Windows in the past:
> >
> >       * I want to be able to have a lot of fonts installed on my system,
> >         so that things look like they are intended to look when viewing
> >         them.
> >       * I don't want all of those fonts to be listed in the default font
> >         dialogs and font selection widgets.
> >
> > And when I'm doing graphic/design work:
> >
> >       * I want to have hundreds or thousands of fonts available and
> >         those that I use in a certain project (which can involve lots of
> >         different applications) easily accessible.
> >
> >
> > One possible solution to the issues above would be to add a system to
> > fontconfig (or on top of it) that allows for the concept of what I call
> > "font groups".
>
> Sounds like you want a specialized tool like fonty-python, designed for
> people who do this kind of work.
>
> What I'm concerned with in this thread is the experience of an average user,
> who cares very little about fonts, just wants their applications to
> work, and be able to display readable text in their language.  We want to
> have the simplest, cleanest infrastructure to provide this.

The problem is after a fresh install the user already has to choose
from 100+ fonts.
An average user doesn't know what to do with all those. Tons of them
look exactly the same in some scripts or are specific to a script or
to languages that the user doesn't care for.

The font selector really should guide the user through this, i.e. give
quick access to the most used or useful fonts for what the user is
currently doing. The specialized tool could just be something to do
more advanced font selection and organizing them.
There is really a need for a better font selection than a flat list
with just font names.

Metaphorically, the current font selection is as if we had a flat list
for the Applications Menu with only the app names in an alphabetical
order to choose from. We should aim for a font selection with
categories, and eventually a tool to change those categories.

Cheers,

Denis Moyogo Jacquerye