Hello!
sicofante
happy to help when I have some free time.
I tried Fontmatrix and I uninstalled it immediately. I cherish
consistency in my desktop so no Qt apps here, sorry. Besides, it's
buggy and clearly exaggerated in the Linux.com article. So I'm very
very happy that you have resumed development.
Now on my first impressions on FP:
1- I don't fancy the "Pog" thing. I suggest you just call it
"Collection". I'd love to see FP becoming a serious app and funny
names don't help ("Fonty Python" is probably in the limit...)
2- Version 0.2 worked fine, but I just tried 0.3.3 and I get a busy
cursor. The apps doesn't seem to be frozen but anyway I can't do
anything with it. I'm using an old laptop at the moment by I'll try
0.3.3 in a brand new desktop soon.
3- FP should scan for ALL available fonts in the system. An app full
of empty boxes is not a nice welcome.
Otherwise, I find the overall layout of the interface nice and easy to
grasp, so nice work!
I'm learning Python right now. I'll let you know if I can help when I
feel confident coding. I also will try to find some time to help with
the Spanish translation.
Donn
> I tried Fontmatrix and I uninstalled it immediately. I cherish
> consistency in my desktop so no Qt apps here, sorry. Besides, it's
> buggy and clearly exaggerated in the Linux.com article.
not running for you at all :(
> 2- Version 0.2 worked fine, but I just tried 0.3.3 and I get a busy
> cursor. The apps doesn't seem to be frozen but anyway I can't do
> anything with it. I'm using an old laptop at the moment by I'll try
> 0.3.3 in a brand new desktop soon.
Please run it from the command-line and let me know what it displays. If
there's a busy cursor then there's probably an error somewhere.
Also, let me know:
1. What folder you ran it in.
2. What your locale is: echo $LANG
3. Your list of locales: locale -a
4. Send me ~/.fontypython/badfiles
5. A (small kb size) screenshot of the app.
> 3- FP should scan for ALL available fonts in the system. An app full
> of empty boxes is not a nice welcome.
Why should it scan? That's defeats the entire purpose of FP.
What do you mean "empty boxes"? Perhaps this is part of the same error you are
seeing.
> Otherwise, I find the overall layout of the interface nice and easy to
> grasp, so nice work!
Thanks.
> I'm learning Python right now. I'll let you know if I can help when I
> feel confident coding. I also will try to find some time to help with
> the Spanish translation.
A Spanish translation would be more than enough help. Be a little patient with
me as I am having a lot of trouble with the whole i18n, unicode thing and I
am still changing the code quite a lot which means the messages are
changing... which means there's a lot of re-re-translation to do.
BTW - I am also learning Python and there's no better way than to dive into
some project. So, just start something!
Thanks for the feedback, and I hope we can fix the problems.
\d
--
Fonty Python and other dev news at:
http://otherwiseingle.blogspot.com/
sicofante
must say the latest versions are working fine. I just wanted to
clarify one of my suggestions below.
> > 3- FP should scan for ALL available fonts in the system. An app full
> > of empty boxes is not a nice welcome.
>
> Why should it scan? That's defeats the entire purpose of FP.
> What do you mean "empty boxes"? Perhaps this is part of the same error you are
> seeing.
>
explain better my suggestion now. What I mean here is that FP should
parse the /etc/fonts/fonts.conf file for <dir> tags and then show
which fonts are installed in the system by scanning the fonts present
in the system fonts directories. I understand FP is aimed at managing
fonts residing in ~/.fonts (i.e. user-wide), but you might want to
rethink it and making it capable of managing fonts system-wide
(perhaps by launching it with sudo/gksu?).
> A Spanish translation would be more than enough help. Be a little patient with
> me as I am having a lot of trouble with the whole i18n, unicode thing and I
> am still changing the code quite a lot which means the messages are
> changing... which means there's a lot of re-re-translation to do.
until the software is more mature and you feel it's polished enough.
Donn
Sorry for being dense - I'm not sure what group you replied-to. At the moment
there is no team for Fonty, it's just me. There is a wiki on
http://fontypython.webfactional.com/, the main code-base is on Savannah,
there is an old google group and there's also a Launchpad project. The only
one I really use is Savannah and I try to keep the trac wiki up to date.
The best place to discuss stuff is on the fonty...@googlegroups.com list,
so perhaps you can start a thread there.
Looking forward to your ideas. I have a few of my own. I must warn that my
coding time has passed for a while - I was very active in Dec/Jan but the
year is upon me now.
Best,
\d
On Friday, 01 February 2008 05:24:49 Aleve Sicofante wrote:
> Hi Donn,
>
> Please check my reply at the group. I think we might have differents
> views on what a font manager should do, but let's discuss it in
> public.
>
> Regards,
>
> Pablo
>
> 2008/1/20, Donn <donn....@gmail.com>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > > I'll be trying 0.3.4 ASAP. Just dropped by to say what I meant by my
> > > proposal above:
> >
> > Great. I hope it's more stable...
> >
> > > - FP should show the already installed fonts, and I mean by that the
> > > fonts you'll see if you open a Nautilus window and type fonts:/// in
> > > the location bar or the fonts you'll seee available in any Gnome app.
> >
> > The 'already installed fonts', as you say, are exactly that : already
> > installed.
> > This means, when you think about it, that you *don't* have to install
> > them.
> >
> > You also cannot *uninstall* them because they are under the control of an
> > app called fontconfig and reside all over the drive in root locations. To
> > uninstall these fonts you have to jump through so many complicated hoops
> > that it's actually easier just to use a package manager and remove the
> > fonts alltogether.
> >
> > > - Next, FP should scan the system for available font directories,
> > > With this information at hand, the user would start grouping the fonts
> > > into Collections (oh, well "pogs") and decide which fonts s/he wants
> > > installed in the system.
> >
> > Answered above; they are already installed.
> >
> > > All that manual search for fonts (both "installed" or "not-installed")
> > > is just very unpractical.
> >
> > The manual search is the *entire* point of Fonty. Let me explain: I wrote
> > it because I have a directory with thousands of fonts (mostly old ttfs
> > from the last 10 years). I know a few designers who have the same kind of
> > thing. They collect fonts and keep them in certain places.
> >
> > Now, before Fonty, there was no way to even *see* those fonts to choose
> > what you wanted to install. You had to drop those files manually into
> > ~/.fonts before they could be looked-at. So, I spent a year figuring out
> > how to display a font that was *not* already installed and that's what
> > Fonty started-out as. After that I thought to try putting a link into
> > ~/.fonts and, lo and behold, it worked!
> >
> > So, the basic idea is for users who want to control their own fonts, and
> > leave the system to the small set it needs for it's reasons. This means
> > you have to browse and sort *your* fonts into Pogs manually, because I
> > can't think for you. Perhaps there are ways we can think of to pre-make
> > Pogs based on the style and family names, but that would be an extra tool
> > rather than anything radical.
> >
> > I hope that explains it for you.
> >
> > \d
> >
> >
> > --
> > I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do
> > because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
> > -- Susan B. Anthony
> >
> > Fonty Python and other dev news at:
> > http://otherwiseingle.blogspot.com/
--
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but
in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
-- H L Mencken