[kde] [Bug 461450] Get rid of italic text for links

[Noah Davis]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=461450

Noah Davis <noahadvs at gmail.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |noahadvs at gmail.com

--- Comment #8 from Noah Davis <noahadvs at gmail.com> ---
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #4)
> Digging a little, it seems like this was re-added to Dolphin 2 via Bug
> 298218, after either breaking or being deliberately removed before that
> (can't tell which). The explanation was "It's usual behaviour that symlinks
> are shown in italic letters. That makes recognition a lot easier."
> 
> This might have predated badging the icon with a link emblem. Even if not,
> italig text for symlinks was apparently at least one user's expectation. The
> more I look at these items, the more I come to agree that both italicizing
> and also showing a link emblem is excessive visual noise for a
> characteristic that is not super important to force the user to acknowledge.
> But It's not a strong feeling, and it's quite possible this would result in
> blowback and complaints.
> 
> I'll submit the merge requests and see how other people feel about it. Keep
> in mind it's quite possible that we won't end up merging them.

It's easy to miss the link emblem when the icon size is small and if you're
scanning filenames in a long list, you have a decent chance of missing the link
emblem anyway. I don't think there's a lot we can do about either of those
problems since there's only so much space when icons are small and the latter
problem is solved by italicizing the text (if you know what italicizing means).
Perhaps italicizing isn't the best way to communicate whether an item is a
symlink (besides the icon), but unless we come up with a suitable alternative,
we shouldn't remove it.

I think whether or not an item is a symlink is important to a user's use of it
if a user wants to copy/cut/paste/move a item because doing any of those can
break a symlink. If the user mistakes the symlink for a normal file,
manipulating it in any of those ways will also not do what they expect.

It's worth noting that the example screenshot shows a symlink on the desktop.
In that situation, you typically have large icons and less text contrast or
busy backgrounds. This is ideal for seeing the link emblem on the icon, but
kind of a worst case scenario for reading italicized text. If we are going to
change anything, we should consider how things will appear on the desktop and
how things will appear in a long list view with small icons.

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