[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 112522] New: Bug/Enhancement request: let the user select the fonts to embed

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112522

            Bug ID: 112522
           Summary: Bug/Enhancement request: let the user select the fonts
                    to embed
           Product: LibreOffice
           Version: 5.4.1.2 release
          Hardware: All
                OS: Linux (All)
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: minor
          Priority: medium
         Component: framework
          Assignee: libreoffice-bugs at lists.freedesktop.org
          Reporter: sergio.callegari at gmail.com

Description:
Libreoffice has the ability to embed fonts in documents it saves in the
opendocument format.

This could be a quite useful feature. However, its benefits are severely
hindered by the choice LibO makes about the fonts to embed.

Currently, font embedding is on/off.

If embedding is activated all the fonts mentioned in the document are embedded,
regardless if they are used or not. Specifically, all fonts that are used in
the document or mentioned in the styles are embedded in all variants (normal,
bold, italic, etc.).

This leads to huge files. For instance, on my system a writer document with no
text at all is already at ~20MB. Same with an empty presentation.

Such big sizes implies that font embedding is unusable in many contexts,
including some in which it would in fact be very convenient. For instance:

- Documents with embedded fonts are too large to be sent via email
- Presentations with embedded fonts exceed size for being uploaded at many
conferences (one case where font embedding would otherwise be extra useful).

In addition to that the huge size makes the files with embedded fonts painfully
slow to open. As an example, the above mentioned empty writer document takes
more than 15 seconds to open on my workstation, with LibO already running and a
warm cache.

The culprit for this problem is that LibO does not let the user select which
fonts to embed, and ends up embedding "international" fonts which are usually
very large.

1) It embeds fonts for Asian languages (which are typically very large) even if
Asian language support is disabled. To me, this is a bug because with the Asian
language support disabled LibO does not even let the user see/edit which Asian
fonts are configured as part of the styles;

2) It embeds fonts for Complex layouts even if Complex layout is disabled.
Again, to me this is a bug.

In my opinion, LibO should let the user select which fonts to embed. 

1) It should propose all fonts present in the document and let the user
tick/untick one by one those to embed. The rationale for this is that the user
may want to embed only some font that he knows would be hardly available by
his/her collaborators.

2) It should provide an accelerator for selecting the embedding/not-embedding
of all Asian fonts that are configured in styles but unused at once. The
rationale for this is that: (i) an user may know from start that he will never
use Asian fonts; (ii) another user, knowing that Asian fonts might be needed,
may want to force their embedding even if his LibO currently has Asian font
support disabled.

3) It should provide an accelerator for selecting the embedding/not embedding
of all fonts for complex layouts that are unused but configured in styles at
once. The rationale for this is that: (i) an user may know from start that he
will never use complex layout fonts; (ii) another user, knowing that complex
layout fonts might be needed, may want to force their embedding even if his
LibO currently has complex layout support disabled.

4) It should provide an accelerator for selecting the embedding/not embedding
of all fonts that are unused but configured in styles at once. The rationale
for this is enabling the user to embed the minimal set of fonts needed for the
display of the document (in particular of presentations).

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a new empty document.
2. Assure that no complex layout nor Asian text support is configured
3. Select font embedding
4. Save the document

Actual Results:  
The saved document is huge. All fonts mentioned in the document are embedded
even those for Asian and complex layout.

Expected Results:
The fonts for Asian and/or complex layout should not be embedded because the
support for Asian and complex languages is not active and the user in this
situation is not even able to see via the style editor which fonts are
configured for Asian and complex layout.

Note: This is midway between a bug and an enhancement request. The fact that
fonts for Asian/Complex Layout are embedded even if their support is disable is
a bug, IMHO. The solution I propose includes an enhancement request for the
font embedding dialog.

Even better the font embedding dialog should propose a list of all fonts
mentioned in the document letting the user tick/untick those to embed.
Furthermore it should provide buttons to automatically tick/untick all Asian
Fonts, all fonts for complex layout, all fonts that are mentioned in styles but
unused in the document.


Reproducible: Always

User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
[Information automatically included from LibreOffice]
Locale: en-US
Module: TextDocument
[Information guessed from browser]
OS: Linux (All)
OS is 64bit: yes
Builds ID: LibreOffice 5.4.2.1


User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101
Firefox/55.0

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice-bugs/attachments/20170920/ca6441bb/attachment-0001.html>