Re: [Gimp-user] Gimp 2.8.2, wheezy install

[Joel Rees <joel rees gmail com>]

On Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 3:46 AM, Liam R. E. Quin <liam holoweb net> wrote:
> On Sat, 2016-07-23 at 07:44 +0900, Joel Rees wrote:
> >
> [...]
> > I'm not getting that. Oh, wait. Yes I am. You click in the font
> > selection field and start typing the name of the font you want, and
> > that's where it starts giving you suggestions that match what you
> > typed. And the list does not show the names of foreign fonts very
> > well. It does try, but doesn't quite make it.
> >
> > Trying to read the developers' minds, they may be trying to avoid the
> > CPU killer option of trying to list every installed font. I've done
> > that on machines without enough memory and gotten a panic.
>
> Please don't try to read people's minds :-)

You mean, you don't want me to try to understand what you are doing?

(Okay, "mind reading" is a bit ambiguous. But it doesn't always mean
imputing evil motivations.  8-* )

> If some of the fonts are
> not listed please report it as a bug. What exactly do you mean by,
> doesn't show the names of foreign fonts very well? What exactly needs
> to change and how? Can you submit a precise bug report showing what you
> expect to happen and what actually happens, ideally using a freely
> available font, and including your language settings (e.g. in Linux the
> output of the "locale" command)? The A-z icons are not be appropriate
> in all cases and some fonts may be rejected on startup if GIMP thinks
> it can't use them, but it is not trying to give you some small subset.

I'll try to make some time for screen shots and carefully unpacking
what I said there, but not today. (I'm supposed to be somewhere in
about an hour, and getting anything better than what I wrote above and
will write below, here, will take more than an hour.)

> [...]
> > For the last little while, you've had to type (roughly) the text you
> > want to paint in into the text layer at the defaults and then select
> > it and set the attributes you want (as you talk about above).
> You should also be able to change the defaults in Tool Options before
> you start typing. That works for me at least.
>
> > Anyway, for now, it will help to think in terms of them trying to
> > leave text layers in a state such that text is not rendered into a
> > graphics layer until you've had a chance to play with the font, size,
> > style, colors, etc.
> >
> > They've made it possible to do that, but it isn't intuitive yet, by
> > any means.
>
> I'm not sure what "intuitive" means in this context. Most people mean,
> "follows from my own personal experience"

Experience or expectations.

Most new users of text editing tools expect the font selection tool to
pop up a huge list if you just click on it (or, following MicroSlop
convention, a small triangle on the right of the font name field).
They also expect a default font name in the font name field.

> but others use "not
> intuitive" to mean "I don't like it" or "I don't understand it". GIMP
> will prompt you in most cases before giving up and rendering a text
> layer to a bitmap. It's likely that this behaviour can be improved in
> the future, after 2.10 is out.
>
> Liam
>
> --
> Liam R. E. Quin <liam holoweb net>

I was trying to remember what the ancient Macintosh convention was and
looked up "font selection widget" on the web and found this
interesting discussion:

http://unifont.org/fontdialog/

The solution suggested there is a bit on the idealistic side and needs
support from the font foundries they seem not willing or able to give.
(Still not in the current version of Libre Office.)

Checking LibreOffice, I see that the font names you show do look more
or less like what one sees in LibreOffice. But I have to know, for
instance, to type "I" in the font selection field in order to get the
IPA Japanese fonts. Randomly typing "m", for instance, brings up a
list of names that just look weird. (And the same font names like
weird in LibreOffice's font selection tool, but at least you have
meaningful font names above and below.)

I'll post screen shots in my blog tomorrow, if you want. I just don't
have time today.

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2016/06/econ101-novel-toc.html