Bug 140900 - [Feature Request] A setting to change the size of the font previews dropdown
Summary: [Feature Request] A setting to change the size of the font previews dropdown
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 101646
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.1.1.2 release
Hardware: All Linux (All)
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsUXEval
Depends on:
Blocks: HiDPI
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2021-03-09 00:56 UTC by chameleonscales
Modified: 2022-04-13 09:07 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Screenshot (80.37 KB, image/png)
2022-04-05 10:51 UTC, Heiko Tietze
Details
Fonts dropdown list (72.06 KB, image/png)
2022-04-07 11:04 UTC, chameleonscales
Details
font previews comparison (387.58 KB, image/png)
2022-04-13 02:06 UTC, chameleonscales
Details
Character properties (57.47 KB, image/png)
2022-04-13 08:51 UTC, Heiko Tietze
Details

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Description chameleonscales 2021-03-09 00:56:12 UTC
Description:
To me the font selection dropdown menu is the fastest way to chose the right font from within LibreOffice because it shows all the previews in a list, letting me quickly glance at them. But...

Steps to Reproduce:
1. in any LibreOffice app, open the Font dropdown menu in the toolbar

Actual Results:
Font previews have a fixed size determined by the operating system's default text size.

Expected Results:
I would suggest providing a Preview size parameter in Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View > Font Lists, right under Show preview of fonts.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: Yes


OpenGL enabled: Yes

Additional Info:
Having to change my entire OS's text size just for that reason is unpractical, as it can  mess with a whole bunch of other programs, not to mention that chosing the right font requires to see it in more detail than just reading your applications buttons and menus.

While this default may have been the right size when monitors had lower resolutions, with today's hi-res 4K screens and the increased diversity and level of detail of fonts, it's becoming hard if not unpractical to find the right font from this dropdown.

At the moment I personally use other font viewing software that provides larger preview lists, which I feel an office suite should provide natively.
Comment 1 V Stuart Foote 2022-04-01 12:42:42 UTC
A slippery slope as bug 101646 still requires attention across the UI, but it would be useful. Precedent of special treatment of the font list is already in the UI with being able to enable/disable rendering the listbox for font preview -- why not provide ability to size the previews?  And maybe a path to addressing a scaling framework needed across the UI.
Comment 2 Heiko Tietze 2022-04-04 07:44:04 UTC
(In reply to chameleonscales from comment #0)
> But... Font previews have a fixed size determined by the 
> operating system's default text size.

Please elaborate on the issue. I don't see a problem with the size of the font dropdown. Rather than fiddling with UI scaling options we should solve the issue, if there is any.
Comment 3 chameleonscales 2022-04-05 10:27:24 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #2)
> Please elaborate on the issue. I don't see a problem with the size of the
> font dropdown. Rather than fiddling with UI scaling options we should solve
> the issue, if there is any.

I'm not sure what to add. I'm glad for you that it looks fine on your side but for me it's too small. I have normal eyesight and can read everything on my screen without scaling OS-wide or using any accessibility feature (I do scale up for my 4K screen but only because it's less tiring, not because I need to in order to read). But when it comes to deciding what I want my font to look like, I need to see the details and this list doesn't cut it for me.
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2022-04-05 10:51:09 UTC
Created attachment 179321 [details]
Screenshot

No issue for me

Version: 7.3.2.2 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 30(Build:2)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.17; UI render: default; VCL: kf5 (cairo+xcb)
Locale: de-DE (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
7.3.2-1
Calc: threaded
Comment 5 chameleonscales 2022-04-06 16:04:53 UTC
If you're happy with how things are I think it would be interesting to know what your screen's size and resolution are because this request is heavily dependent on it.

Just to be clear I don't experience any unintended behavior with this list. It's just a subjective feature request.
Comment 6 chameleonscales 2022-04-06 16:08:22 UTC
I will also provide mine when I get back to it but seeing your screenshot I can already say it looks small to me.
Comment 7 chameleonscales 2022-04-06 16:59:07 UTC
$ xdpyinfo | grep -B 2 resolution
screen #0:
  dimensions:    3840x2160 pixels (1016x571 millimeters)
  resolution:    96x96 dots per inch
Comment 8 QA Administrators 2022-04-07 03:42:42 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 9 Heiko Tietze 2022-04-07 06:27:28 UTC
(In reply to chameleonscales from comment #5)
> it would be interesting to know what your screen's size and resolution are...

Sure, high resolutions are always a source of trouble. Still waiting for a screenshot to judge...

xdpyinfo | grep -B 2 resolution
screen #0:
  dimensions:    3440x1440 pixels (802x333 millimeters)
  resolution:    109x110 dots per inch
Comment 10 chameleonscales 2022-04-07 11:04:38 UTC
Created attachment 179372 [details]
Fonts dropdown list

My screenshot
Comment 11 Heiko Tietze 2022-04-07 11:11:40 UTC
(In reply to chameleonscales from comment #10)
> Created attachment 179372 [details]

And what exactly would you like to change? Is it too large? Do you mean the collapsed drodpown or the expanded list?

(In reply to chameleonscales from comment #0)
> I would suggest providing a Preview size parameter in Tools > Options >
> LibreOffice > View > Font Lists, right under Show preview of fonts.

To enter a value for the size of one UI is probably not a solution to any problem. But if some adjustments are needed for high resolution I'm all in.
Comment 12 chameleonscales 2022-04-13 02:06:41 UTC
Created attachment 179498 [details]
font previews comparison

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #11)
> And what exactly would you like to change? Is it too large?

No, to me it looks too small (once more).

> Do you mean the collapsed drodpown or the expanded list?

Not sure what the question is. I mean the dropdown list we see in both our screenshots.

> To enter a value for the size of one UI is probably not a solution to any problem.

You say "one UI" as if this dropdown was like any other. GNOME's Font manager displays each font in all sizes at once to allow the user to preview a font at their desired size. Blender (my preferred way to preview fonts) shows resizeable previews which can get much larger than LO's dropdown (see attachment).

I can certainly understand how developing such a feature can be complicated for performance or code rewriting reasons, but I don't understand the mindset that letting the user control how to preview fonts without affecting the rest of the interface is "not a solution" to the problem.
Comment 13 V Stuart Foote 2022-04-13 03:22:40 UTC
(In reply to chameleonscales from comment #12)
> Created attachment 179498 [details]
> font previews comparison
> 
> (In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #11)
> > And what exactly would you like to change? Is it too large?
> 
> No, to me it looks too small (once more).
> 
> > Do you mean the collapsed drodpown or the expanded list?
> 
> Not sure what the question is. I mean the dropdown list we see in both our
> screenshots.

The listbox widget has two states--collapsed with a font selection (with or without a preview rendering), or the full expanded droplist of multiple fonts with their "sample" text (font name or representative string).

> 
> > To enter a value for the size of one UI is probably not a solution to any problem.
> 
> You say "one UI" as if this dropdown was like any other. GNOME's Font

One UI widget within LibreOffice, obviously.

Project made a dev decision to hand over widget controls to the os/DE, stripping out ability to scale some selection of "individual" widget elements. That was done to improve integration with emerging os/DE and their roll of consistent handling of HiDPI displays. Doing "other" things require an agreement to diverge from os/DE norms and the dev effort to work up a frame work to support it consistently cross platform. 

As explained in bug 101646, which this really is a duplicate to, some components of the UI benefit from ability to selectively scale compared to what os/DE provides.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 101646 ***
Comment 14 Heiko Tietze 2022-04-13 06:50:59 UTC
(In reply to chameleonscales from comment #12)
> ...resizeable previews which can get much larger than LO's dropdown (see
> attachment).

Thought you complain about the text itself <Font name...Font preview> (expanded widget) or the dropdown when collapsed in case of very long font names in mind. But your point is to have a larger font size in the preview, which is better for special fonts like this PaintyPaint.

I concur with Stuart's duplication verdict that points to the general solution of a UI scaling. A larger font size comes on cost of readability and the average use case is to pick one (sans / serif) font from the list. But admittedly there are cases when the fancy stuff is used. Maybe the preview of the character properties dialog helps here.
Comment 15 chameleonscales 2022-04-13 08:47:55 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #14)
> Maybe the preview of the character properties dialog helps here.

Not sure how, although this made me notice that, while the character properties dropdown updates the preview as you arrow up and down, the one in the main window doesn't update the selected text as you do the same. You have to hit enter but then the focus gets out of the selector widget, so you have to use your mouse again. Maybe that's what you were referring to and maybe that's another issue to address for the main window.

> Project made a dev decision to hand over widget controls to the os/DE,
> stripping out ability to scale some selection of "individual" widget elements.

As I understand it, the blocking point is mainly that the toolbox can/should only use regular widgets (e.g. a Combobox as GTK calls it), which I understand.

In that case, since other places in the UI have non-regular widgets/viewports, e.g. the font preview in the Characters properties, maybe we could have a font list with large previews there? The main idea of this issue is to not have to see each font one by one but being able to see many fonts at once in all their glory.
Comment 16 Heiko Tietze 2022-04-13 08:51:56 UTC
Created attachment 179507 [details]
Character properties

(In reply to chameleonscales from comment #15)
> Not sure how...

This preview
Comment 17 chameleonscales 2022-04-13 09:07:25 UTC
Yes, that's the preview I was talking about in the following sentences. But selecting text in a page and changing the font does the same thing, apart from that updating issue with up and down arrows I mentionned.