Font-Selector: GUI to manipulate fontconfig

Registered by Arne Goetje

Fontconfig offers a variety of font related settings, which can currently only be modified by hacking a XML file together. This application is a GUI for this task, taking common settings like font ordering, antialiasing, hinting and embedded bitmaps into account, as those settings vary greatly depending on different users' preferences.

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Medium
Drafter:
None
Direction:
Approved
Assignee:
None
Definition:
Drafting
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Not started
Milestone target:
None

Whiteboard

2008-07-01 kamion: James Westby has agreed to help out with this. Arne, there is still some information in the "BoF agenda and discussion" section which hasn't been folded into the main body of the specification (e.g. specifics of configuration files, manipulation requirements, the user requests that seem useful, etc.). Normal practice is for the "BoF agenda and discussion" section to be removed entirely once all its contents have been folded into the main body, before approval. Could you do this?

2008-07-01 james-w: I don't see any discussion of how this will interact with the gnome tool to manage fonts (under System->Preferences->Appearance). Would that be removed, or does it serve a different purpose and so would still be present?

2008-07-02 arnegoetje: James, this is indeed something we will have to figure out. As that tool comes with Gnome, it is likely to be present nonetheless. Unfortunately, settings made with that tool override the fontconfig settings for Gnome applications. So, one idea would be to manipulate both, fontconfig and gnome settings at the same time with the font-selector tool if possible.

2008-12-22 rickspencer3: Arne, I am having difficulty determining the specific proposed enhancements from the specification. Perhaps a section that bullets out the new functions (from the users' POV) would be helpful.

2008-12-23 pitti:
 - use case for user E: this sounds like an "unbreak my desktop" setting; can't this happen automatically?
 - empty assumptions section (just remove)
 - design: how can the GUI change system settings? (PolicyKit-ified D-Bus backend?); this will make the program design very complicated, and I don't think it's realistic for jaunty; IMHO we should only support per-user at this point
 - GUI design should include mockups from mpt
 - move additional user requests to "Unresolved issues" section, i. e. everything you don't want to implement for jaunty

(?)

Work Items