2008-09-25

How to display font listing

Yes, this is yet another post about fonts. As I found how to get more information on available fonts, I'm gathering some ideas on the best way to display them. By "font" I mean the combination of a font family (like "Verdana"), a weight (like "extra bold"), and a style (like "italic"). Each font has a font family name, and is backed by one file (though there can be several fonts in one file, like with Open Type fonts). FOP calls such a combination of font family, weight and style a "font triplet". So it's important to name clearly the fonts giving all the characteristics of the font triplet, and the name of the font file (with a path relative to the project's root). There should be a duplicate warning when this happens, that could be some small red symbol. A nice feature is to display characters that are supported in source documents. This is partially supported by now (the SupportedCharacters doesn't get'em all). Many fonts are documented in a way like this using a table; a table is nice because empty cells show missing characters. There should be a small text showing how the font renders. A sentence with all roman alphabet letters ("the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog") is not enough because it contains no accent. The best language-insensitive display I've seen is mixed-case alphabet ("AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHh..."). Because such a table takes much space, we can show one font per page. Because there will be many pages, the first page should list available fonts by family, with hyperlinks. As information about broken fonts becomes available, those should be listed in the first page, preferably with a red symbol aside.

No comments: