Bug 141119

Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.5.6)
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs

In the last few days I happened to use "kcmshell kcmfontinst" quite a few times, because I'm currently trying to gain more knowledge about printing + fonts (esp. as far as it concerns KDEPrint, CUPS and Ghostscript).

Hence, a few ideas came to my mind, how kcmfontinst could be improved for KDE4 (3.5.x is probably out of scope) by adding a few features.

I admit, if you take all the items in my feature request together, the application will go far beyond a simple "Font Installer", and should more likely be re-named a "Font Manager".

OK, here we go:

"Simple" feature requests: 
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 * display actual font file and path for each font name
 * search function (search for names, paths and file names)
 * show alias names of fonts
 * show what "fc-match" would use for a given fontname

"Advanced" feature requests:
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 * functionality like is availabe in "gucharmap".
 * functionality like is availabe in "gwaterfall".
 * ability to create groups of fonts which could be easily disabled/enabled at will (also "hiding" of fonts)


There is of course no need to bloat the current UI with all these things. But if they could be made available behind an "Advanced" button (or some similar means), it would be nice.

My need to display the actual font file name+path (as well as the search function) stems from the very often non-obvious mapping of file names to font names to glyph shapes. Or could you say (out of the back of your head), which font hides behind a file name such as bl______.ttf?

Regarding "gucharmap" and "gwaterfall": these are Gtk/Gnome programs. If you don't know them yet, have a look please. A long look, I mean. You really only start to appreciate what these applications can do for you, if you play with them for an hour or more.

gucharmap:
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allows you to browse through all the available Unicode characters for all installed fonts. You can display their glyhps, look at their descriptions and Unicode names and invocations (UTF-8 and UTF-16), find their XML entities, and lookup aliases they also may be known as. gucharmap also supports browsing through the Unicode categories of a font and examine their properties in much detail. gucharmap provides a nice and easy way to find any glyph you might only know by its Unicode name or code point. Last, you can copy any glyph into an edit line, and by this means easily construct complex strings consisting of various fonts, scripts and glyphs for further usage.

gwaterfall:
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displays simultaneously a sample of the line "The quick brown fox..." in various sizes (defaults to a range from 5 to 36 points with steps of 1 point -- but range and steps are configurable); allows to enable/disable and change hinting, autohinting, anti-aliasing, subpixel smoothing and aspect, with an immediate display of any change on the screen; Unicode characters are divided into blocks of 128 characters (which can serve as the text sample), so users can browse through each font's Unicode characters as well (or not, if the font is limited to ASCII)..

font grouping/hiding:
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it would be nice if there was a way to tell an application to only display a set of given fonts (must be configurable) for the current document. It is a pain i.t.a. and very inconvenient to have a few hundred fonts installed, and then work with a document that uses various of them (but only 3 or 4), and you've to frequently select in the dropdown one from the hundreds of fonts...


Anyway, thanks for kcmfontinst so far -- it is a really nice little program. :-)