176019 - [RFE] prefs-offer only monospace styles in monospace font select list

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, enhancement)

Description

[Felix Miata]

1.2b 2002102108 OS/2 trunk; 1.1 20020826 Linux Mandrake 9.0

Strange results flow from choosing an inappropriate face in prefs. The user
should not be permitted to cause this via the UI. The user won't know why a
particular font choice doesn't work, and may not remember the original setting
or another that did work prior to making a change.

Currently in Linux and OS/2, all available fonts are in the select lists for
each of the typefaces, while on Windows®, only font faces suitable for the style
being selected are displayed to choose from. Proportional faces should not be
listed or selectable in choosing a monospace font, and vice versa, on any OS.
Neither should cursive or fantasy fonts be listed or selectable in setting
conventional serif or sans-serif fonts.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This is a duplicate.  Please find the original and mark this duplicate.  Thank you.

Comment 2

[Felix Miata]

I tried and tried and tried before I filed it. Bugs visited today:
43742, 44727, 66182, 79031, 79032, 170923, 33340, 61883, 29351, 28899, 39436,
49573, 56441, 134991, 147564, 68170, 116629, 119798, 132660, 139071, 160703,
164463, 16729, 57488, 125432. Several searches resulted in several hundred
summaries to sift through.

Comment 3

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

The reason we do this on OS/2 is for double byte countries. They have fonts that 
are marked as proportional but are actually monospaced.

Comment 4

[jhp (no longer active)]

On OS/2, we tried to remedy this situation.  We wanted fonts to be listed just
as they are in windows, with only serif fonts in the serif menu, and so on.  The
OS/2 FONTMETRICS structure provides a facility for this called 'panose'.  I
wrote the font code to take advantage of this, and discovered that many fonts
either did not have panose information or, worse yet, had incorrect info.  So we
defaulted to listing every font in each dropdown menu.

Comment 5

[Felix Miata]

Why can't you exclude those you know shouldn't be included, reducing the total
of inappropriate choices available, thus improving the liklihood that an
appropriate choice will be made?

Comment 6

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

(Filter "spam" on 'prefs-nobody-20080612'.)