sans-serif text cannot be formatted

[remusjlupin]

As I want my SVGs to look good on any system no matter the fonts installed, I like using "sans-serif" as a font. Inkscape does allow me to do this, and displays the text right, but it complains about the font not having been found on the system and - and this is the important thing - doesn't let me make it bold or italic.

To reproduce:
- create a new text object and type something, then change its font to sans-serif (not Sans)
- click the bold/italic button

You will see that this does not work. However, this can be worked around:
- select some other font
- make the text bold/italic
- change the font back to sans-serif

Now you have just what you wanted (bold sans-serif text), and this is how I'm working around the bug right now - but this just is not very intuitive and pretty time-consuming and should be fixed so that you can directly make sans-serif text bold or italic (or, for that matter, remove the boldness/italicness of a piece of sans-serif text).

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Could you please provide information about your OS and Inkscape version (see Inkscape menu 'Help > About Inkscape')?

AFAIU the failure to format a text with an unrecognized font family (in 0.48: "Font not found on system" warning symbol in the font selector on the toolbar) is due to
- Bug #379885 “Generic font-family names not recognized in font lister”
  <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/379885>

Related (needs to be addressed in current trunk too):
- Bug #1002757 “Regressions with new default font 'sans-serif' (r11393)”
  <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1002757>

[remusjlupin (remusjlupin)]

Sorry, I forgot to mention this: I'm running Inkscape 0.48.2. My OS is OS X 10.8.2 but it also happened when I still used Linux Mint Debian. I just tested on Windows 7 and there not even my workaround works (changing back to sans-serif makes Inkscape not render the text bold).

Yes, this seems to be the same thing as bug #379885 but in that bug it wasn't mentioned that this makes formatting possible only through the workaround I described, which is somewhat more annoying than just an error message saying that the font wasn't found.

[rickmastfan67 (rickmastfan67)]

I'm another Win 7 x64 user here, and is one workaround, but it's not pretty.

Pretty much, you have to save your file, and then open it in an external text editor and manually change it to bold via that, and then the font is bolded when you re-open Inkscape.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Font 'sans-serif' can be formatted since revision 12089 (fix for bug #1002757).