FontInstaller (Was: Gnome Article on UI Design on /.)

[Thomas Diehl]

Am Dienstag, 23. April 2002 10:26 schrieb Torsten Rahn:

> The original point was that having two listviews next to each other is
> pretty confusing. ...

Yes and no. While I can imagine a lot of users who will always be confused 
when confronted with dir listings in any form this is definitely not true 
for a lot of others who find this the clearest approach. Hence probably the 
idea of having a Basic and an Advanced mode. (Personally, I'd  really want 
to keep those 2 listviews for Advanced mode. It is also used, BTW, by the 
Adobe Font Manager and lots of other similar programs.)

> - and he has got to realize that the fonts that he "installs to the
> directories on the right side" are actually those fonts that are used by
> the system (This fact is written exactly nowhere).

Becomes clear enough (for me) by the strings "Install from" and "Install to" 
(ordinary users will hardly understand -- or care about -- the intricacies 
of X11 font handling anyway).

> In addition he will be confused by words like "Truetype" and "Type1". Ok,
> there might be some people who know about "Truetype"-fonts (although my
> Dad doesn't know anything about them 

I think even Windows XP shows still a difference between T1 and TT in the 
icons and it can be pretty important even for ordinary users not to have 
two identical typefaces in their T1 and TT versions installed. (Corel eg 
provides _all_ the 1000+ fonts on their DRAW and Ventura CDs in both T1 
and TT versions. But if you install both you will get big problems when 
printing, at least in Windows.)

Anyway, I don't care too much what of this goes into Basic mode. But I would 
insist that it can be _vital_ for a DTP pro to ensure that (s)he has T1 
fonts _only_ installed (and which ones, from where, to what locations). 
Sending TT fonts by mistake to an image setter which is not able to digest 
them properly can still cost you real money in the printing business. (And 
like I said: I would realy like to do my real work one day in KDE, not only 
hobby stuff.) Therefore, having very clear distinctions for T1 and TT at 
least in Advanced mode is important. And it should at least be _possible_ 
to see which is which in Basic mode.

Regards,

Thomas

-- 
KDE translation: http://i18n.kde.org/
Deutsche KDE-Uebersetzung: http://i18n.kde.org/teams/de/