[nc] Technical: Light/Medium/Regular/Bold, investigate /etc/fonts.d/ to map bold to next level up for each
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ubuntu Font Family |
Triaged
|
Medium
|
Paul Sladen |
Bug Description
Ascension of the weights is Light→Regular→
Designers seem to prefer selecting one Typeface from a list, and then selecting between all the styles and weights offered within that. In this case two entries would be seen in the Font selection menu:
1. Ubuntu (+ 9 choices)
2. Ubuntu Mono (+ 4 choices)
Non-designers may wish to see a list that looks more like:
1. Ubuntu (+4 choices)
2. Ubuntu Condensed (+1 choice)
3. Ubuntu Light (+ 4 choices)
4. Ubuntu Medium (+ 4 choices)
5. Ubuntu Mono (+4 choices)
In this case, the idea would be to have each of the lighter fonts "up weight" _two_ steps to the next-but-one in the family; applying bold weight to Light skips Regular and actually maps to Medium:
Regular→Bold
Regular Italic→Bold Italic
Light→Medium
Light Italic→Medium Italic
It should, hopefully be possible to effect this purely with a mappings file dropped into /etc/fonts/conf.d, rather than needing to mess with the actual files themselves in a way that might potentially upset designers later or at a stage when the basic font dialogues have been improved.
description: | updated |
summary: |
- Technical: Light/Medium/Regular/Bold, investigate /etc/fonts.d/ to map - bold to next level up for each + [nc] Technical: Light/Medium/Regular/Bold, investigate /etc/fonts.d/ to + map bold to next level up for each |
Changed in ubuntu-font-family: | |
importance: | Undecided → Medium |
> Non-designers may wish to see a list that looks more like:
What do you base this assumption on?
I don't see why a non-designer user wouldn't benefit from having all the styles in the same family.
Either way, the proposed families are already implemented in the OpenType 'name' table in the files. libraries can only handle 4 style variants (i.e. Regular, Bold, Italics and Bold Italics) and up-to-date applications/ libraries can handle more style variants. It just seems weird to want the user to be stuck with the legacy behaviour.
Legacy applications/
See http:// www.microsoft. com/typography/ otspec/ name.htm
Name ID 1 and 2 are for Family name, and Subfamily name (only the 4 style variants), what you refer to as non-designer's preference.
Name ID 16 is for Preferred Family name and ID 17 for Preferred Subfamily name, what you refer to as designer's preference.
Name ID 21 and 22 could also be used if there are more style variants (like Caption, Display or more fantasy like Stencil, etc.)
In 0.69, there are already name ID 1, 2, 16 and 17.