Hi!

There seem to be an awful increase, recently, in the number of bugs reported
around the behaviour of the font family and font size selection toolbox in
0.46 (and it equally affects SVN as for now). There are also some outstanding
Critical bugs - just some examples are:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/168161
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/168320
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/168719
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/183179
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/218502
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/218502

I know often this is associated with Win32 platform but I have seen those on
Linux as well. What seems to cause the problem often is when the default font
(or font applied to the text) does not exist.

Would it not be nice, if one could enter any arbitrary font family name for a
font and have Inkscape handle it gracefully.

I would like to help with this issue (OK, I can even abandon my Linux for a bit
to help on the Win32 platform) but I still know too little of the Inkscape
codebase. But what seems to me like a plausible solution would be to reproduce
the functionality of the Text and Font dialog in the font tool bar. 

I presume that many issues could be solved when SVG Fonts are finally
implemented.

Just wanted to grab some of your attention though no doubt it is already on
the issue :-)

Cheers,
--
Marcin Floryan
http://marcin.floryan.pl/ [GPG Key ID: 0D5581C5]