Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 84950
making choices about interface font does not work
Last modified: 2013-01-29 21:59:03 UTC
I guess this is one issue — the choices about interface font DO NOT WORK. This happens systematically, for years, at least in my environment. Options either work erratically or produce no visible result. The "Use system font" option stopped working quite a time ago, somewhere in 2006-2007. I may check it and play with .gtkrc-2.0 or with KDE, the OOO is NOT showing my system font (by the way, is it GTK font? KDE font? something else?), but rather its own Vera, in largish size and bold style. Much of a dialogs just get unusable until I set Size percentage in options. If I remove Vera's physically, the OOO does the same trick with DejaVu Sans. I'm attaching the screenshot in 100%-size next thing. Also, while the trick with substitution of "Andale sans UI" SORT OF WORKS in Pavel Janik's builds (somehow, not all fonts seem to be accepted), it produces NO RESULT in Sun community builds (like the recent release of 2.4.0). I may substitute whatever I wish, the result is still same large and bold large DejaVu Sans. I didn't even change anything in my configuration, just upgraded from the PJ build of 2.3.1 to Sun's build 2.4.0. In all circumstances, the very easy for the eye BDF font with WGL4 coverage I'm using for the interface in KDE and GTK apps is not even considered an option in all of the OOO font dialogs, even for the UI. So is there a way to switch off that fancy font processing logic or to put a manual switch- off somewhere at least? Also, to have a more decent font size as UI default. Until then, I rather feel like the UI font processing in OOO is an annoying bug, not a feature. Sorry.
Created attachment 50631 [details] This is OOO 2.4.0 with Vera font and Cyrillic UI language (but same things happens with English UI language)
Created attachment 50632 [details] Almost same thing with DejaVu, somewhat narrower glyphs though (English UI language)
I somehow don't see 2.4.0 in the dropdown list, but the Pavel Janik's builds also seem to be affected (e.g., the 2.4.0-9248). The registry cache was purged, etc. The fonts in the documents are not affected by this.
@hdu: Herbert, the font expert ;-) Is something known about UI font substitution not working?
One of the important differences between 2.3.1 and 2.4 in this area was the highly requested feature of better fontconfig integration (issue 54603). Use the command fc-match "Andale sans UI" to find out what fontconfig thinks is the best replacement for a missing AndaleSansUI. This also overrides the obsolete Tools->Options->FontReplacement settings.
If I understood this right, this intentional change actually represents a drastic and dubiously motivated regression of usability, then. *What is the purpose* of completely taking away the functionality of selecting the application UI font, style and metrics, which even the simpliest X app possesses?? There was no way to fully control UI font metrics even before, and the "system font" check-box was being ignored in OOO for a while. Now, it's always the unchangeable font and unchangeable metric — even without fc-match, I had quite a good impression of what gets selected here (DejaVu Sans, style:Book). So now the font's selected via fontconfig mechanisms. Very very big deal. First, the font is not as easy on eyes, as some fonts which I'd prefer to use (and actually use in other apps, and was able to use in OOO before). So those fonts have no complete unicode in them — so what? Second, the "automagically selected" point size is about 14 pt big and the style is bold. Dialog and menus easily take half the screen. So are there any plans or intentions to change this ?
In Sun's CWS builds, one can select the substitution for the interface font and have it work, actually. E.g., it is so on OOO310m5 (Build:9390). In Pavel Janik's builds, though, this feature... is not active? is not there? I've just built myself the DEV310_m48 via the Pavel's framework. Consequently, my choice of interface font is again oh-so-right-thing-ingly fontconfigged to the Dejavu Sans Book. Joy. :( Apropos the UI font point size -- can it be changed directly, anyhow?
I wasn't entirely correct -- build of DEV310_m48 made in Pavel Janik's framework *allows* changing the UI font -- sorry for that "slander"! However, my mistake was actually caused by the build mentioned *ignoring* the fonts visible to fontconfig but not installed as the X fonts (not in the xorg.conf paths). Not only are such fonts ignored as the UI font choice, but they are ignored by the OOO completely, in text processing etc.