Bug 91438

Summary: optionally use monospaced/serif font in search/replace/spell dialogs
Product: [Applications] kate Reporter: Jo Schulze <jo>
Component: generalAssignee: KWrite Developers <kwrite-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: wishlist CC: nate, waqar.17a
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: openSUSE   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In: 21.04
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Jo Schulze 2004-10-16 13:48:44 UTC 
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.3.1)
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs
OS:                Linux

The search/replace dialogs of eg. kate use the default font to display the text to search for/replace with. Same goes for kspell and other dialogs.
Most users will choose a sans-serif font as their default font.

However, sans-serif fonts display some characters the same (or very similar), eg.:
I (capital i),l (lower l), 1 (one), !, i 
or the classical 
0 (zero) vs. O (capital o) confusion.

Confusing these letters can cause havoc not only in programming language sources, but may turn natural language into l33t, eg. OCR often confuses I,!,l,| and in sans-serif, there is no way to tell the difference between 
I'll or l'll or |'||

A monospaces + serif font (like courier) would make the difference much easier to see.

Instead of adding a "display user input monospaced" checkbox in the various per-app settings, IMO it would be great to have a central setting in the Control Center -> Appearances -> Fonts dialog. This should lead to all kde apps render user text input fields dialog parts with the monospace font.
Comment 1 Jo Schulze 2005-07-05 02:33:19 UTC 
C'mon guy, I think I have a point here. Just think about the reason why this bug system displays everything posten in a courier (monospace with serif) font: it is easier to difference the chars.
Just to make report more precise: with "This should lead to all kde apps render user text input fields dialog parts with the monospace font." I didn't meant that every input filed should become the mntioned way. But an option to define a special font for these kind of dialog systemwide would be nice (and IMHO greatly appreciated by coding folks).
Comment 2 Jo Schulze 2006-11-05 03:46:44 UTC 
I can see mysqlf aging when looking for this whish:
another year has passed and nothing happened...

C'mon guys, in the KDE fonts settings we have 7 different fonts. All I am asking is either optionally using the "Fixed Width" font for S&R style user input or an 8th font for the same purpose. 

If there is any question about this ask me. If not: I will keep on nagging!
Comment 3 Jo Schulze 2008-02-03 14:24:36 UTC 
Uhm ... maybe a nice new feature for KDE 4.1?
Comment 4 Waqar Ahmed 2021-01-11 21:51:16 UTC 
I guess this has now been fixed with https://invent.kde.org/utilities/kate/-/merge_requests/149

Sorry that it took 16 years.
Comment 5 Nate Graham 2021-01-11 22:38:36 UTC 
LOL