[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 94886] Make "bold" and "italics" character style configurable

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94886

Fred <d1312 at phx.li> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEEDINFO                    |UNCONFIRMED
     Ever confirmed|1                           |0

--- Comment #7 from Fred <d1312 at phx.li> ---
First a comment: apparently, what I called "typeface" is actually correctly
called "weight".  As I'm not a font expert I will continue to use the word
"typeface" to avoid confusing LO developers until someone with acknowledged
font design background confirms this.  For the purpose of clarity I will also
call styles "strong" and "emphasis", using their literary function rather than
the specific choices of font weights may make it clearer where the issue lies
and to distinguish the function from the font weight, sorry, typeface. 
Writers, LaTEX users and web developers will certainly grok this.  Onwards with
the reply :).


You may be able to /see/ font typefaces after some digging in the interface,
but you cannot actually /use/ them sensibly.  When you use the Gill Sans
"light" as default typeface in the document style setup, the "strong" and
"emphasis" functions will pick the wrong typeface ("weight") as they default to
the "bold" and 'italic" typefaces that match the regular font typeface instead
of the required matching "SemiBold" and "ItalicLight", and there is no easy,
logical way to adjust this fairly fundamental functionality.

The current situation is that users are forced to brew their own setup when
they select any default font that is not "regular", and can only do so by
defining separate character styles and further remapping the keystrokes if they
want to have keyboard access, which is really hacking around missing
fundamentals.  

By making the "strong" and "emphasis" functions directly configurable it would
be far easier for the user to make LO work with their choices and store them as
appropriate in either the one document, or even as their working template.  The
flexibility also makes it possible to choose entirely different fonts for
strong and emphasis (which makes LO also more interesting for typesetting/DTP)
but I digress.

In this context I'm wondering if the same choices should not be exposed as
document defaults, in Preferences/Settings - LibreOffice Writer - Base Fonts
there is not even a typeface selection, nor are "strong" and "emphasis" defined
there as they again rely on that last century assumption.  You could still call
them "bold" and "italics" if you don't want to confuse users with accuracy
(cough :)), but it's IMHO a fairly major omission in this context too.

BTW, it is best to leave the typeface selection open - it's not just about
"light" versus "regular".  Font weights go from "hairline" all the way to
"ultra-black" or can be identified by numbers such as in "Helvetica Neue 45".

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.