While I know that I don't really get a vote, I thought I would offer a user's opinion.
In short, it's this. I agree with Uwe. I think the dialogs are unnecessary. It's no secret that I don't care for the Computer Modern fonts(in less politic moments, I've been know to call it ghastly); but they work as a default. All of the standard document classes support them, they're included in essentially every LaTeX distribution and they're relatively attractive when printed. For those of us who don't care for it, we can easily choose another option through the Document Settings -> Fonts pane. That is a much better solution than trying to do something about it. For example, succinctly describing the differences between bitmap fonts, vector fonts, and font encodings would be difficult in then 10 words allotted to a pop-up. Moreover, I would argue against anything that further clutters the LyX interface. I already have to deal with such "helpful" pop-ups on Windows and Mac OS X, and I usually wish they would go away. But I do have to second the observation that CM PDFs tend to look jagged. By that, I mean that they have a very bizarre angled appearance that I find difficult to read on-screen. I much prefer the appearance of Latin Modern or Palatino, which is "softer" and more refined. On Thu, 2009-12-10 at 04:50 +0100, Uwe Stöhr wrote: > Ben M. schrieb: > > > Simply accepting LaTeX's default is a terrible solution because it > > leaves the n00b wondering why their pdfs look jagged. > > What is a n00b? > PDFs don't look "jagged" with the default font. All PDF viewers I know are > able to smooth pixel > fonts (Acrobat, Foxit Reader, Okular, GSview (gv), Sumatra PDF). > > As said, when the user don't like the font, then he can use another one. > > > Personally, I'd > > like to see these two dialog box notifications. > > > > Upon view/export: > > Warning: You have not yet selected a font for this document. > > That's confusing because there is a font selected for this document - the > default one. Note that the > default is not necessarily CM. I wouldn't wonder when TeXLive or MiKTeX one > day implement to set the > default font in the distribution settings. This is for example already the > case for the page format. > (MiKTeX's default is A4). > > > The default font may not be optimized for viewing. > > What means optimized for viewing? CM is a very well designed font used in > thousands of publications. > > > Warning: The font you have selected (Computer Modern) is a bitmap > > font, which is not optimized for viewing. > > This is much too complicated for new users. When I'm new to a program I want > to use it and not be > forced to learn how fonts are defined and what a bitmap font is and why it > might have disadvantages. > When I don't like the result, I simply use another font. This is intuitive > and doesn't require to > read the UserGuide. This behavior is the same with all word processors. > > regards Uwe
