[kde-guidelines] Typography HIG update

[Andrew Lake]

On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 12:04 AM, David Edmundson <david at davidedmundson.co.uk
> wrote:

> From a developer using the HIG perspective, I want to add a few things.
>

Thanks much for taking the time to look at this David!


>
>
> There is a user setting for setting the smallest readable font and the
> menu font and the window title font. We should be using these.
> (
> http://api.kde.org/4.x-api/kdelibs-apidocs/kdeui/html/classKGlobalSettings.html
> )
>
> That's why I called out the "Small", "Menu" and "Window Title" in the
third column. I'm happy to remove the relationships between these system
fonts and the General font if it causes confusion. That or replace it with
a parenthetical em scaling.


>
> It's a bit confusing as Plasma have diverged into their own thing
> (http://api.kde.org/4.x-api/plasma-qml-apidocs/Heading.html)
>
> We should probably unify these, even if it means adding code somewhere
>

The trend on a few other platforms appears to be in the direction offering
fonts for each typographic category, makiing it a little easier for
developers to satisfy typography guidelines without the additional layer of
"translation" between the HIG and the api provided system fonts. In that
sense I think the Plasma Heading offering coincides well with this trend.
For now though, I'm content that devs have *some* guidance on how to do the
right thing regardless of whether a convenient API is currently available.


> >Limit line length to between eight and ten words per line. For
> typographic categories that use an all caps typeface, limit to between
> three and four words per line.
>
> Do we ever encourage all caps?
>

All caps have been used quite successfully in graphic design generally and
various UIs in particular. What's important is understanding the impact of
their use and knowing how to use them appropriately. I don't see reason to
discourage their use, as much as provide guidance on how and when (not) to
use them.


> I'm not sure this line length this is particularly do-able. Especially
> with i18n.
>

The eight to ten words per line or the three to four word per line for all
caps?


> >Layouts with dynamic type resizing should be carefully considered
>
> Does this whole paragraph mean "don't randomly scale your text to fit
> spaces"?
>

Haha! Well, yes kinda. I think resizing text to fit spaces *can* be done
sensibly, as long as the text doesn't get so big/small/heavy/light that
it's bigger/smaller/heavier/lighter than other text we're relying on to
establish the visual and information hierarchy. For example, don't resize
body text till it's bigger than the heading text. Or don't resize the
section heading text to fit more words until it's smaller than the body
text for which it provides a heading. Or don't resize text of relatively
less importance till it's bigger than text that should be relatively more
important. Sure, one way to solve this by *never* resizing text. But I also
don't want to pretend that there is never a legitimate reason to re-size
text.

Hope this helps answer your questions and thanks for taking the time to
review and provide feedback,
Andrew
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