themes should use desktop default font

[Florian Heinle]

Currently, our default themes (except "website") feature the font "Deja
Vu Sans Mono". Not a bad choice but possibly not installed on every
platform/computer. Furthermore, GNOME (dunno about KDE, but I guess it's
the same) allows setting custom default fonts for every application.
Using those fonts would be as simple as choosing "Serif" for every font.

IMO we should change our themes to honor users' choice about default fonts
in applications. But this needs discussion first

subscribed pyroom-team for discussion. Needs to be discussed before 0.3.2 release

[Bruno Bord (brunobord)]

Sounds reasonable.
Is this kind of feature available, like setting "monospace" or "mono" or "fixed" as the font value?

[Florian Heinle (tiax)]

I'm afraid it's way more complicated than I thought. I don't think choosing system default fonts easily from themes is possible. We should rather consider the approach gedit and gnome-terminal take: make "use system default font" a configurable setting and allow the user to override it with at will.

I'm removing this bug from milestone 0.3.2, this should rather be included in a future release.

[Florian Heinle (tiax)]

ok, after some research, I propose the following, theme-independant settings, selectable via radio control buttons:

1) GNOME default document font (think serif), grayed out if gconf unavailable
(2) GNOME default monospace font, grayed out if gconf unavailable)
3) theme supplied font, always enabled
4) custom font (doesn't change theme selection to "custom")

some notes: we should consult GNOME interface guidelines as to which fonts to use in text editing software, just to make sure providing monospace for non-terminal-related apps isn't discouraged or something.

Themes can still provide their own fonts, but I find it a little problematic. In cases of "standard fonts" users either have made their decision about which font they like in their documents or simply don't care. Either way, forcing theme creators' font choices on them doesn't sound like a good idea (and I'm not sure if "green text on black background" alone warrants "monospace font is a must for this theme"). It's different with artsy themes, think journal-type themes that recommend "handwriting"-fonts. But those fonts don't come pre-installed and would have to be installed by the user anyway, so letting the user set it as a custom font isn't too much of a burden.

IMHO we should drop the font-clause from themes altogether. Not now, but definitely before 1.0 ;) Any oppinions on that?

[Luke Faraone (lfaraone)]

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 8:57 PM, Florian Heinle <email address hidden>wrote:

> some notes: we should consult GNOME interface guidelines as to which
> fonts to use in text editing software, just to make sure providing
> monospace for non-terminal-related apps isn't discouraged or something.
>

Don't worry, it isn't. See the "gedit" and "scribes" text editor. Any time
you're handling plain text, you can use monospace.

[Florian Heinle (tiax)]

PyRoom now offers to select between GNOME default monospace font, GNOME default document font and custom choice.

Availability of gnome default fonts depends on whether python module gconf can be imported.
I'm in the progress of installing virtual machines to check if this works for xfce, etc, too

Fixed in Rev 146

[Florian Heinle (tiax)]

it worked in kde but broke in xfce because xfce provides gconf but doesn't set gnome fonts. Revision 147 makes that a little safer now.

[Adam Rooke (abelianr)]

The only change I would suggest is adding "Gnome Default Document Font".

At the moment I use KDE and with "Default Document Font" (assuming a novice user) it doesn't explain why it may be greyed out, when document font is something that can be specified in your system settings.

[Florian Heinle (tiax)]

Hm, I'm not exactly comfortable with adding platform dependant things
into the main GUI, maybe just adding a tooltip over greyed out options
might be good enough?

[Florian Heinle (tiax)]

fixed in 0.4 release