Re: [Tuxpaint-i18n] [Tuxpaint-users] TuxPaint text area default font
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From: Bill K. <nb...@so...> - 2009-06-02 02:28:07
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On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 07:53:46AM +0800, Frank Weng (a.k.a. Franklin) wrote: > > Additionally, I've just updated it so that (in the next version), the only > > locale-specific font that is presented in the Text tool is the one meant > > for the locale Tux Paint is running in. (For a long time, we've been > > showing the Tibetan font in the Text tool's font selector, but it contains > > ONLY Tibetan characters, no Latin 'A-Z' :) ) > > > > (Note that it will be possible to disable this new feature.) > > Pardon me. I didn't quite understand what you meant. Did you mean > that there would be only one locale-specific font in the Text tool? > Or the locale-specific font would be set to the default one? Let's see if I can explain the history. ;) Prior to our utilizing a system called "Pango" for rendering the text in Tux Paint's user interface (the buttons, dialogs and the messages at the bottom), Tux Paint simply used a TrueType Font (TTF) and a basic text rendering library. (Note: On older platforms, like Windows95, we still do it 'the old way.') Some locales required very large fonts (Korean, for example) which contained the characters needed to display the UI in that locale. The standard font that we shipped with Tux Paint wouldn't work for all locales, and including all the fonts for all the locales that needed their own took too much space. So fonts for a number of locales were made available as separate downloads (again, Korean, for example). When you install them, they go into a subfolder inside Tux Paint's fonts folder. Tux Paint knew which locales needed their own fonts, and would load the appropriate one from that subfolder. In the meantime, Tux Paint's "Text" tool was enhanced so that it could find fonts elsewhere, as well as recurse into subdirectories to look for them. That caused all of the locale-specific ones that you have installed to appear in the "Text" tool's font selector. (e.g., Korean, Japanese, Thai, Tibetan, etc.) At some point, we decided a number of the fonts were so small that we could include them by default, rather than have a separate download. Now, only Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional and Korean fonts are separate download. The rest that we need (Arabic, Tibetan, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Georgian, Tamil, Telugu, Thai and a _subset_ of Traditional Chinese (enough to display our UI)) come with Tux Paint by default. Even all together, they are still under 3MB. So the problem was: many of the locale-specific fonts were very close to the fonts that we include for the Text tool itself. (These days, it's FreeMono, FreeSans and FreeSerif.) And SOME were unusable in any language except the one they were meant for (the Tibetan font we have right now has no "ABCDE...XYZ"... those spots in the font are Tibetan characters!). So, to avoid confusing children when they use the "Text" tool ("what's this font? It's not letting me type the alphabet!"), the next version will avoid loading any of the fonts in Tux Paints "fonts/locale/" subdirectory, unless they are for the current locale. So most users will see a number of mostly-redundant fonts disappear from the Font selector in the "Text" tool. They will also see a confusing-looking Tibetan one go away. Users running Tux Paint in Arabic, Tibetan, Greek, Gujarati...etc. will still have access to a font that works for them, and fewer fonts that DON'T work for them. (They will still have the FreeSans, FreeMono and FreeSerif.) > Besides, is it possible have an option specifying a default font? Now this is where our 'font scoring' mechanism comes in. We provide a way for our translators to create strings that help us sort the fonts in the "Text" tool, so that the most useful ones 'bubble up' to the top of the list. When you're using Tux Paint in Japanese, the "fonts/locale/ja.ttf" font that we loaded should appear first. Any other fonts you have on your system that you've told Tux Paint to find (e.g., via the "Load System Fonts" option), or installed into Tux Paint directly, will likewise be sorted based on how well they support Japanese. Unfortunately, the mechanism we have has been underutilized, but since your original email to this list I've posted to the mailing list for Tux Paint internationalization ("tuxpaint-i18n") asking translators to take a look at these strings and update them. I included improved instructions and examples of how it works. I've already received an update to Tux Paint's Ukrainian translation that should help score fonts that support Ukrainian symbols. I see that the Traditional Chinese translation is NOT utilizing this scoring system at the moment. If you feel like helping, you can take a look at the latest translation file here: ftp://ftp.billsgames.com/unix/x/tuxpaint/source/po/zh_TW.po Learn how to help us edit the translation files here: http://tuxpaint.org/help/ and here: http://tuxpaint.org/help/po/ And read the post about the scoring system here: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=200...@so...&forum_name=tuxpaint-i18n So, once all this is done and perfected (if ever ;^) ), people running Tux Paint in a particular locale should have, by default, a suitable font chosen when they first launch Tux Paint and use the "Text" tool. WHEW! Long-winded response, sorry! :) I hope this made sense! -- -bill! Sent from my computer |