[Libreoffice] LibreOffice default UI font is StarOffice Andale Sans UI ?

[Caolán McNamara]

On Sat, 2011-02-05 at 15:18 +0700, Samphan Raruenrom wrote:
> Anyone agree that we should change the LibreOffice default UI font
> list?

In the VCL.xcu it shouldn't matter if a font listed isn't found. It
should just try the next one. So removing it from that list shouldn't
help much. The trick may be to add in some extra font to try.

>         You can see that the first-priority default UI font of every
>         LibreOffice applications are, "Andale Sans UI". 

Hmm, from the screenshots at
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33090 is it the case that
the Desktop UI language is actually English ?, i.e. that the system UI
font is then tested to see if it can render some English text. 

>         However, "Andale Sans UI" is not available on all system. I
>         guess "Andale Sans UI" will be installed with StarOffice. So
>         it's not logical to be used as the first-priority default UI
>         font.
>         
>         Look at
>         http://opengrok.go-oo.org./xref/libs-gui/vcl/source/window/window.cxx#287
>                 if ( ! aUserInterfaceFont.Len() )
>                 {
>                     String aFallbackFont
>                 (RTL_CONSTASCII_USTRINGPARAM( "Andale Sans UI" ));
>                     if
>                 ( mpWindowImpl->mpFrameData->mpFontList->FindFontFamily( aFallbackFont ) )
>                     aUserInterfaceFont = aFallbackFont; 
>                 }
>         
>         The font also is used as the last-resort fallback font. I
>         suggest we reconsider the use of this font and create a better
>         font list that works more cross-platform and cross-locale. 

Yeah, I'm not particularly against removing/changing "Andale Sans UI",
but look at the code around that line. We should be trying to avoid
getting to that line in the first place, assuming that we *are* getting
to that line. Have you debugged this already to know that this is where
the problem actually is ?

So..., here's what I'd like to know

a) What does "tools->options->language settings->User interface" say ?
b) What font *does* work

I sort of suspect that we're looking at a case where the UI is in
English, the system font is fine for that language. Maybe it doesn't
have Thai glyphs in it, and maybe we're therefore in windows glyph
substitution mode, and maybe that's all busted up for complex text.

There's too many unknowns IMO to make a judgement on just changing the
eventual final fallback and stripping it out of the VCL.xcu, do we know
if either of those actually works ?

C.