Am Freitag, den 07.04.2017, 00:44 +0200 schrieb Uwe Stöhr: > Since many years LyX misses the feature to input options to the font > loading commands \setmainfont etc. We did not act for 5 years > because > you said exactly the same as today that it is not the right time: > http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/8226#comment:2
The comment you refer to was posted when fontspec basic support was just added. I argued that this basic support needs testing and bug fixing before we start to add new features to it, and it turned out that this was no wrong prediction. In any case, such features need to be implemented at the beginning of new development cycles, since they need testing and improvement, not at the end of cycles. > There might perhaps never be the right time, so let's eventually do > it! I agree it should be done eventually. But properly, with a thought-out UI and some real testing time. The feature is important for several languages: > > \setmainfont[Script=Devanagari > > is sometimes necessary. Inputting the Script option is currently > almost > impossible if you are not a LaTeX master. You need the same level of LaTeX knowledge (or knowledge of the fontspec package, for that matter) in order to use your proposed UI. It does not make things easier at all. It will rather confuse users who do not know what to enter there (and if they know, adding a line to the preamble is in no way more difficult). > Therefore the right way to do > this is to provide an input field for all options people might need. > So > we speak about adding simply 3 line edit fields. Which make the dialog unnecessarily wide and which nobody can use without having the fontspec manual open. It's bad UI design. A good UI design takes time and thinking. I have thought for _months_ about how to implement biblatex UI-wise before I even started to code one line (this is why it took so long). I don't say that this feature is as complex as Biblatex, but going "let's implement the feature and fix the UI later" is always a bad idea. In general, the "Fonts pane" needs to be re-thought. Particularly during this cycle, new widgets have been added (microtype, em-dash) which I think make this pane inconsistent. I do not have a good idea yet (I think we need some kind of "Advanced Font Features" subdialog or pane), but as I said, this needs time and thinking. > > I think the fields are at the right tab where I put them. Of course > we > can rearrange their position and size. Please make a proposal. I plan to implement some generic key-value dialog widget in the 2.4 cycle. This would translate key-value option to either checkboxes (booleans), combos (closed lists), editable combos (open lists) or line widgets (text input). The UI could be oriented for instance at the UI of the Qt designer. It occurred to me that such a thing is needed to implement the rest of biblatex, but it will also be useful for class and package options, and it can be used to implement a proper font features UI. > I implemented that the fields are only active when fontspec is > actually > used. If you see here mistakes in my patch, please tell me. Yet they are still visible (and hence clutter the dialog) when fontspec is not used. > > So again, please be constructive and help. > > Concerning the features of LyX 2.3. Scott encouraged me to have a > look > for features I proposed to LyX 2.3. So I took some spare time after > a > long break with LyX and came up with some patches for new features. > Unless a feature freeze is announced one could work on features. If I > am > encouraged to look and decide what could be part of LyX 2.3 I think > I > should be treated fair and my patches should be reviewed in a normal > manner. That's what I do. But you seem to always take criticism personally, whereas I am criticizing the implementation proposal, not you. > I already skipped things I won't have time to implement or that would > be > too massive changes for LyX 2.3. Everybody does that (fortunately). Jürgen > > thanks and regards > Uwe
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