Re: new thread! new thread!

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 06Sep2001 12:00AM (-0700), Seth Nickell wrote:
> (sorry, I ended up writing this to myself and I can't find the message
> it was in response to)
> 
> > > 8) The HTML Viewer should not be in the main section. In fact, it
> should
> > > use GTK+ font preferences
> > > by default, and probably shouldn't exist at all. How can the user
> know
> > > what changing "HTML viewer"
> > > will change? It probably won't change their web browser, but it'll
> > > change applications like 
> > > Evolution. That's an archane technical detail, don't expose it. Its
> ok
> > > if we find a more
> > > general way to express this that controls other similar text (not
> just
> > > GtkHTML text) and have
> > > a central place to set fonts.
> > 
> > In web browsers it's often useful to set the font to something other
> > than the system default. I typically use a larger font. Perhaps there
> > could be a "web browser font" setting with other font preferences, and
> > maybe we could even make some attempt to get Mozilla / Netscape 6 to
> > obey it. I agree it's not worth a top-level control panel though.
> 
> Yes, I agree that you want control over the fonts in your web browser.
> The problem is that most of the places the "html viewer" is used is in
> applications like RedCarpet or Evolution where they aren't really a web
> browser. When GtkHTML is used to make interfaces (a practice I abhor,
> but a fact we may have to live with) its not clear to me that changing
> the web browser font *should* affect the font size. When GtkHTML is used
> in an interface context it should use the GTK font.

Red Carpet (or the new Control Center, if that's using html, not sure
if it is) and Evolution are different cases. In the former case, HTML
is just being used to build an interface so the font should probably
be the system font. In the latter case, however, we might be
displaying HTML email and it makes a bit more sense to use the web
browser font there (if different). This is all pretty confusing
though. Maybe there is no sane way to set fonts other than the system
font in an application-independent way.

> Suz and I have been talking over one solution to "Default
> Applications"...which is to create an "Applications" category parallel
> to "Main". Each general class of application can have an entry e.g. "Web
> Browser", "Email", "Text Editor", "Word Processor"... The preferences
> contained in these dialogues will control what application to use for
> this class (for example, Web Browser might have the choice between
> Mozilla, Galeon, Netscape 4, and Encompass, of course omitting
> applications which are not installed). Also it will have preferences
> which are common to those applications, for example Web Browser might
> have proxy settings (probably those should eventually be universal, but
> for now I think web browsers and Nautilus are the only applications that
> support this), default home page, etc. There are some issues with this,
> like making sure applications don't get out of sync with the preference
> etc, but at least with GNOME applications this should be feasible
> (certainely in the long run).

I think application settings should, in general, be in the
application. A proxy setting should probably go in some general
"network settings" dialog, but default home page is a rather
app-specific thing. I can imagine wanting it set differently for
different web-browser-like apps (certainly I want it set differently
for Nautilus and Galeon...). Basically the whole idea of an
"Applications" category in the control center sounds like a bad move
for this reason.

 - Maciej