Color, Icon and Font Settings in KDE4

[James Richard Tyrer]

Olaf Schmidt wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> The feature plan contains a usability and accessibility review period that has 
> not yet started.
> 
> We nevertheless decided to forward some of the already known issues to 
> kde-core-devel earlier to make it easier to fix them before the full API 
> freeze.
> 
> 1. The handling of colours, icons and fonts in KDE can be much improved.
> You can find a description of useful changes here:
> http://amen-online.de/%7Eolafschmidt/colors/colors.pdf
> 
> Qt designer mockups are also available:
> http://amen-online.de/%7Eolafschmidt/colors/designer.tar.gz
> 
> We are aware that it would be unrealistic to expect everything to be change in 
> time for KDE 4.0, but it would be nice if at least the colour scheme system 
> could be updated soon.
> 
> My impression is that does not need to be an intrusive API change if done 
> well, but I am not a real programmer, so this is up to you to decide how to 
> best tackle.
> 
> 
> 2. We need to organise a review of all widgets in kdelibs/kdebase for 
> compatibility with the new QAccessible architecture. Is there a list 
> somewhere with all the widgets that exist?

Your ideas about color seem to be good.  You are quite correct that hard 
coded colors in apps should be avoided.  I also note that if an app adds 
its own colors then it should be possible to change them in the apps:

  	Settings -> Configure <app_name>

dialog.

I also looked at the suggestions for fonts.  The idea of offering to 
return to the default is a good one also.  I presume that these will 
correspond to the different defaults for the font setting that called 
the dialog.

This does have one issue which is the default for: "Font Style".  It is 
possible that not all fonts will have a style that corresponds to the 
style (in some cases it doesn't exist or the user might not have 
installed it).

Examples:

I first note that "Regular" is properly called "Medium" and I think that 
this should be changed.

URW Gothic L:	This font has only: Light, Light Italic, Demi Bold, and
		Demi Bold Italic.

Helvetica:	This font comes in many weights and it is possible that
		the user has installed one weight (e.g. Light and Light
		Italic) but not installed Medium.

In both of these cases there is no "Medium" ("Regular") font style (the 
same would be true if the Default was "Bold").  The proposed idea will 
need to have the behavior defined in this case.

I have some other usability issues with the Font Selection Dialog/Widget.

With the "Medium" font style, sometimes the standard weight face has a 
name for the style and sometimes it doesn't.  Sometimes it is called 
something other than "Medium".

Examples:

	ITC Zapf Chancery [Bitstream]: "Medium"

	Times: "Roman"

	Adobe Garamond: "Regular"

For some reason, KDE renames all of these to "Regular".  I personally 
don't like it and feel that it is a usability issue.  If I install a 
medium weight font and know its name then I look for it and can't find 
it because the weight name has been changed to "Regular".

Another issue is the "Book" is a weight.  It is not "Medium" and not 
"Light" but rather somewhere between them in weight:

	ITC Lubalin Graph: "Book"

KDE changes the weight "Book" to "Light".

There is also a similar problem with fonts that have the style: 
"Oblique" or "Slanted".  These styles are not really "Italic" which is 
probably why the fonts are not called italic.

I don't know why someone thought that having the code change the names 
of the font styles was a good idea.  I would say that it does not 
improve usability and should not be done.

The more serious usability issue with the Font Selection Widget is that 
Type1 and TrueType fonts are not treated the same by FontConfig.  This 
appears to be the result of the fact that TrueType does not correctly 
separate the style from the font family name as Type1 fonts do.

So if I install: "Helvetica Narrow Bold" in Type1, it will be shown as:

	Family: Helvetica
	Style: Narrow Bold

(At least it would be shown that way if KDE could find it).

But if I install: "Arial Narrow Bold" in TrueType, it will be shown as:

	Family: Arial Narrow
	Style: Bold

Although the Type1 method is probably more correct, I believe that using 
the TrueType method would be the better choice.  In which case, "Font 
Style" should be changed to "Font Weight"

I am not certain how this difference occurs but the cache files for 
FontConfig have it as above:

	"hvnb____.pfb" 0 "Helvetica:style=Narrow Bold

	"arialnb.ttf" 0 "Arial Narrow:style=Bold

I also note that "Narrow" != "Condensed".  Helvetica comes in both styles!

--
JRT