In LO today, we don't have a proper separation of italic variants of font families from oblique variants. Obviously, italic fonts are one thing, and oblique fonts are quite another; see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_type It should be possible to treat these separately. That is, a toolbar button for italicizing will not engage obliqueness, and vice-versa (but engaging any of them will disengage the other, since there aren't any italic-oblique fonts AFAIK); and they won't use the same keyboard shortcut. I suggest that an option to do this be added to the LO option, and the necessary UI work be done to allow for it. I am assuming that the ODF format supports such separate indications, please correct me if I'm wrong.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 35538 ***
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #1) I'd say that bug is too bug to just have lots of dupes. How about treating it like a meta bug? This one is pretty specific.
I disagree. As described on the cited Wikipedia page: > Oblique and italic type are technical terms to distinguish between the two > ways of creating slanted font styles > ... > Few typefaces have both oblique and italic designs, as this is generally a > fundamental design choice about how the font should look. A font designer > normally decides to design their font with one or the other. The two - italic vs oblique - are just internal technical method of creating a slanted variant of the font, which will be the only one for a given font. The "Few typefaces have both oblique and italic designs" is something esoteric, and it would be interesting to find real samples; but even if they are found, their existence does not justify increased complexity of UI for some crazy font design case. The "italic" term is well-established to not only relate to the strict technical method, but also to more generic meaning of slanted font variant - and LibreOffice uses this well-established, widely-accepted meaning - and let it be this way.
(In reply to Mike Kaganski from comment #3) > > Few typefaces have both oblique and italic designs, That seems to be true. > as this is generally a > > fundamental design choice about how the font should look. This is commentary, not fact. In Hebrew, for example, it is faux pas to slant a font. There isn't even an italic form, although in some rare cases, font designers create a variant which is slants both forward and backwards, for a sort of a rhomboid shape (David CLM), or have the horizontal lines curve upwards and downwards for more of a roundish shape (Drugulin CLM). > A font designer > > normally decides to design their font with one or the other. Actually, it's more the case that if an Italic font isn't part of the design, then a serious font designer without too much pressure on him/her would simply not have an oblique variant. It is considered (not universally, but widely) a type-crime: https://creativepro.com/dont-commit-the-type-crime-of-applying-faux-italic-in-microsoft-word/ https://listverse.com/2012/06/24/top-10-typography-crimes/ And in Hebrew, this is even stricter: Typographic guidelines in many (most?) venues simply order you not to use oblique/slanted forms at all, period. I was actually considering creating a feature request for LO to simply not offer to use oblique Hebrew variant, except if you enable them by a special preference, defaulted-off. But then I noticed that few rare exceptions of non-italic "italics". > The two - italic vs oblique - are just internal technical method of creating > a slanted variant of the font, which will be the only one for a given font. Absolutely not. Italic variants of font families are a respectable typographic tradition going back centuries and influenced by handwritten forms. Oblique / "mechanically" slanted font family variants are hacks. Some consider them useful hacks, others consider them unsightly hacks, but hacks nonetheless. > The "italic" term is well-established to not only relate to the strict > technical method, but also to more generic meaning of slanted font variant That is only true for lay users of word processors, not for those with any knowledge of typography. I'm suggesting we ameliorate this state of affairs. PS - In Arabic and Farsi the situation is different than both Hebrew and Latin, because fonts are all basically still cursive, and originally weren't even written in straight lines but with a downward slope, making the idea of slanting all the more weird, but others would be more qualified than me to comment on that. I don't know about other scripts.
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #5) > > The two - italic vs oblique - are just internal technical method of creating > > a slanted variant of the font, which will be the only one for a given font. > > Absolutely not. Italic variants of font families are a respectable > typographic tradition going back centuries and influenced by handwritten > forms. Oblique / "mechanically" slanted font family variants are hacks. Some > consider them useful hacks, others consider them unsightly hacks, but hacks > nonetheless. This is absolutely unrelated to LibreOffice. LO is an office suite, which goal is *not* to be some educational tool to teach about some ancient roots of some contemporary things. It absolutely doesn't matter what font designers think; often it even doesn't matter what cultures consider correct - what is important that there is a use of slanted variant of the same font as used normally - e.g., some kinds of emphasis; and office suites provide the means for *applying this kind of slanted font not as a separate font*, but as a *formatting* option. And for the formatting option, it doesn't matter if the slant comes from font or is faked; it doesn't matter if the slant in font is italics or oblique; it might only matter for the user when one decides which fonts to use or not use, but not for the software when offering this *formatting* option. To emphasize: *everything* you are talking about is ignoring that in *office suite*, slant is *not* a separate font variant which should be a separate item in the font list, but just a formatting option applied to the text written in this font. And this point of view is *normal* and *productive*, regardless what people who know the roots think. I can tell you many things that people confuse - in zoology; in heating systems; in medicine... but if I started require people to know those details that *don't* affect their lives, their work, and that don't make their point of interest - I'd be stupid. No, people do *not* need the distinction forced on them, which only matters for several dozens of specialists in this world. For those specialists, tdf#35538 would be a required pre-requisite for enabling more detailed font handling in LO - and likely no amount of care would be enough to make LO adequate for those people. But their needs are not what office suites are for.
Don't see why oblique should be handled separately from other weight types. And if Hebrew disapproves italic it's rather up to the font designer. And we have ideas to remove italic as direct formatting and use emphasis (which sets the property). For your language it could use oblique instead - and we keep the same command/icon and don't clutter the UI. The Formatting (Styles) toolbar is implemented and you can show it via View > Toolbars. Attaching oblique to Emphasis is a question to the default template. Other topic. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 35538 ***