Linux and application installing

[Alex Hudson]

On Thu, 2010-09-09 at 14:28 +0300, Nicu Buculei wrote:
> On 09/09/2010 01:24 PM, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > A screenshot is marginally useful, but how do you give a good idea of
> > how the font works in different weights, sizes, and with different text
> > (particularly those fonts with good Unicode coverage)? I think it's
> > sub-optimal to say the least.
> 
> You are going way to far here... for this purpose (normal users 
> installing fonts) a PNG with the standard "The brown fox..." text in 
> normal, bold and italic is enough.

I disagree with this. Even if we assumed the user is writing in Latinate
script (not using some non-Latin script, right-to-left, etc.), there's
nothing saying they're using basic letters.

        Use case: someone wants to format a spreadsheet of numeric data,
        and wants a serif font where the numbers don't descend past the
        base line (this would disturb the rules and double-rules of
        financial tables).
        
        Use case: someone is looking for a font with common symbols
        (webdings, wingdings, etc.), has picked the characters from the
        character map and wants to see what they look like.

I would agree that a "The brown fox..." screen shot is better than
nothing, and better than the information available in PK right now,
sure. But that's not to say that's all a user needs or wants. That's
basically what the current non-rpm font installer does, and it's not
amazingly helpful.

Font selection is not an "expert" task either, it's about the first
thing people learn when using computers. I don't think the latinate
assumption holds, either - there are plenty of scripts Fedora users use,
and having a screen shot for each common one is just making a simple
task complex.

Cheers

Alex.




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