From: Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Jul 05 2002 - 00:57:54 EDT
--- Mark Gilbert <webmaster@dofty.zzn.com> wrote: >
Now there's a thought, just have a tag for
> 'fallback-font' and then if
> font isn't available, use fallback font. We can
> even write the fallback
> on save without prompting the user, IMO, since we
> already prompted about
> the fact that it wouldn't be WYSIWYG when he first
> opened the document.
We would probably have global prefs settable by the
user that would get written to documents either
automatically as you might prefer, or at the user's
request.
Doing it automatically might not work well enough in
cases with 3 or more users sharing a document and not
having the same fonts. Allowing more than a couple of
levels of fallback might result in unexpected things
happening as a document gets older while being
modified by several such users.
> Cool thinking.
Thanks! (:
Andrew.
> -MG
>
> On Fri, 2002-07-05 at 00:38, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> > --- Joaquin Cuenca Abela <e98cuenc@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > --- Leonard Rosenthol <leonardr@lazerware.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >ie. if we change Arial for Helvetica, we have
> to
> > > > show in the
> > > > >font family combo box the Helvetica name (as
> this
> > > > is the font the
> > > > >abiword is using to display the text).
> > > >
> > > > Agreed.
> > > >
> > > > But you may also wish to alert the user as
> well
> > > > since their
> > > > document WILL reflow based on the new metrics.
> > >
> > > yup. IMO that's a must. We should inform the
> user
> > > that he is not going to see the document exactly
> as
> > > it
> > > was originally layed.
> > >
> > > But we should also provide a [x] Don't show
> anymore
> > > this dialog box, because if he sees it once,
> chances
> > > are that the dialog box pops everytime he opens
> a
> > > document created on an alien OS
> > >
> > > > >This substitution should be a "only visual"
> one
> > > > (only the string in the
> > > > >GUI is affected, but the doc is still saved
> with
> > > > "Arial"), or a "hard"
> > > > >one (the file is saved with "Helvetica").
> > > >
> > > > I would give the user a choice about this
> one,
> > > > given the
> > > > metrics changes and that they may now be using
> > > this
> > > > file always on
> > > > the new machine and may want it changed
> > > permanently.
> > >
> > > I think that by default we should pick the less
> > > intrusive option (ie, soft changes), because
> that
> > > way
> > > the user can still later change the choice to
> "hard
> > > changes" (once you do a hard change, you can not
> > > come
> > > back to a soft change on a given document).
> > >
> > > The option of give the user the word as what it
> > > wants
> > > by default the first time the problem arises is
> > > tempting, but I don't know if a "normal" user (I
> > > mean,
> > > a REALLY NORMAL ONE, not these weird guys that
> use
> > > "lunix" or whatever :) would understand what's
> all
> > > that "original fonts not available" businness.
> If
> > > we go this path, we definitively will need a
> good
> > > wording for the dialog box.
> >
> > I just thought of one further option that may be
> > worth investigating.
> > Would it be worthwhile to be able to specify two
> fonts
> > for a section of text? One preferred and one in
> case
> > the first is not available?
> > When a Unix user first works on an AbiWord doc
> created
> > on Windows they can have three options:
> > 1) Just use soft font remapping - change nothing.
> > 2) Do a "hard" font remap which changes the fonts
> in
> > the file forever.
> > 3) Add the Unix fonts as the fallbacks in the
> > document.
> > This will be a "hard" change since it will
> change
> > the document but the document will still retain
> > exactly the same appearance as both users on
> both
> > OSes like it.
> >
> > In fact, the easy and nice way would be to be able
> to
> > add the font remapping table (usually only about 3
> > entries) to the beginning of the AbiWord document
> > format.
> >
> > We would then have "firm" font substitution (:
> >
> > Andrew Dunbar.
> >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > >
> > > =====
> > > Joaquin Cuenca Abela
> > > e98cuenc@yahoo.com
> > >
> > >
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