Issue 7235

Summary: Show warning if fonts not found
Product: General Reporter: lars <lars_o_hansen>
Component: uiAssignee: AOO issues mailing list <issues>
Status: ACCEPTED --- QA Contact:
Severity: Trivial    
Priority: P3 CC: issues
Version: OOo 1.0.0Keywords: rfe_eval_ok
Target Milestone: AOO Later   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
Issue Type: FEATURE Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---

Description lars 2002-08-24 23:46:35 UTC
warn the user if the document is displayed with the wrong fonts, use the 
warning technique like in issue 7185

perhaps offer a new file type, which includes no-standard or documentcreator-
selectable font files

perhaps offer all fonts bundled with OOo on OO.org for users who don't have the 
fonts on their system to download them
Comment 1 thorsten.martens 2002-08-26 08:48:16 UTC
TM->FT: A wish for a new feature, please have a look ! Thanks !
Comment 2 falko.tesch 2003-10-08 14:53:00 UTC
Throw a warning (that one can de-activate for good) if a document
contains fonts that are not installed on the system and going to be
substituted.
This warning should contain all information about which fonts are
missing and what fonts are used for substitution.
Comment 3 falko.tesch 2003-10-08 14:53:15 UTC
.
Comment 4 floid 2007-11-02 16:40:48 UTC
Let me "second" this request and provide some further thoughts.  Some of these
may be pretty Ubuntu-specific, but the same thing can occur elsewhere:

We're often ending up with documents asking for "ArialTT," possibly from
importing Word and Wordperfect files.  This is substituted with a default font
"DejaVu Sans."  They're visually similar onscreen so this is never caught before
printing.

7185 has good ideas, but applied here would use a transient warning to represent
an ongoing condition.  If the font being displayed is not the font selected or
named, that fact needs to *always* be obvious to the user.  If the user doesn't
want to see status information *necessary* to work sanely with documents, they
can always use page preview.

Example of a transient warning failing:  User opens document, receives warning,
fix first paragraph.  The rest of the first page is fine, and the user fails to
notice that, halfway through the document, the unavailable font was called for
again.

If fonts are going to be shown in the font list but don't exist, the font list
needs to make this visually apparent.  Suggestion:  Color the font name red with
strikethrough and a distinct "No" icon to the left of the name.

If it should be possible to 'use' fonts that don't exist in expectation of them
becoming installed, more UI work needs to be done.  There are corner cases where
you might want this, but that's more a 'DTP' problem than a 'word processor'
problem.

Related thoughts:

* It should be possible to make it visibly obvious *in the document* where an
unavailable font is being substituted for.

* It should be more obvious how to change the 'default' substituted font and/or
its character style, which would solve for the above.  An office that has to use
Arial for everything (Court requirement!) could set the default substitution to
something like Courier in bright orange with a wavy underline, making it very
obvious where things need changing.  

An office that normally works with orange text in a serif font could, in turn,
choose DejaVu in black.

* It should be possible to do actual font substitution ('find' all instances of
ArialTT and 'replace' with Arial, if ArialTT doesn't exist and Arial does).

* ft covered the idea of listing missing fonts, but if this is going to go in a
'fade-out' dialog suggested by 7185, the user will have to try to remember what
it said.

...

One missing-object/missing-font UI I'm familiar with is Adobe InDesign's, which
gives a floating window listing objects containing missing items, broken links,
etc.  It certainly works, although floating windows are often annoying.  I think
the full solution is:

1. Give the user a transient, verbose warning ('Fonts are being substituted'),
2. Display a persistent warning as an icon or notification in the status bar,
3. Make absences obvious in the font list,
4. Make substitutions obvious in the normal editing view, and
5. Make it easy to find and correct all such instances.

Sneaking the last point into the existing Find and Find and Replace interface
may be better than reinventing a wheel, and could have side-benefits if this
makes the Find feature grow a reporting feature for all searches.  (Find Next,
Find All, Find All-and-pop-up-a-window-with-a-list-of-occurrences?)
Comment 5 bettina.haberer 2010-05-21 14:54:36 UTC
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on
my owner to the owner "requirements".