Re: [Gimp-gui] Are fontconfig aliases meaningful?

[Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Sun, 25 Oct 2015 19:00:46 +0100 Jehan <jehan girinstud io> wrote:

> For GIMP images, it means that when you select "Sans", you don't even 
> know which font is actually behind. Worse if you send a XCF to someone, 
> on text edit, the font will change (if another is used under the hood 
> for the other person).

This means the aliased fonts aren't suitable for interchange - but fc-list here produces over 7,000 entries, 
and I can't assume that someone else will have, say, MVP Celestia installed on their system.

The aliases are great when you want a font that matches the UI, and they are useful for defaults e.g. in 
scripts where you've no idea what fants the user will have.

You can also use them to construct fonts - e.g. I make a version of Courier that's horizontally condensed, 
although they don't seem to work in gimp.

> I definitely prefer to know which font is actually used (and on file 
> sharing, if the other does not have the right font, get a message 
> telling you the font name which is missing so that I can search and 
> install it).
Better might be a dialogue a la Quark Express, that shows which fonts are used with a project. An option to 
keep fonts in a per-project directory (folder) and activate them only when the project is open would be 
awesome.

> Solution could be that when I click an alias, it actually change 
> directly into the actual font.

But if I save the file, change theme, open the file again, maybe I now want the current theme font to be 
used? I'm not sure, I think it'd be OK either way.

> I want the information of which actual 
> font was used stored in the XCF. Not only for sharing, but even if I 
> ever want to edit the file later on another computer.
It would help if Image->Information had a "fonts" tab.

When we add opentype feature support this will become more important and the font chooser may need revamping 
too (e.g. "I want a font with a ct ligature").

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/