As far as the text-tool drop-down is concerned, I totally think it should steal the interface Krita uses to manage paint modes. Mock-up: http://i49.tinypic.com/eq1fep.png
Fonts would be stored in categories, and within categories, you can check a box to make the font appear in the "favourites" category on top. Uncheck to make it disappear again.
This could solve pre-rendering issues: fonts will only render once you open a category. I'm not a font expert so I don't know how they should be categorized though.
I'm aware that Inkscape doesn't have that widget, but it totally should, especially for managing the fonts drop-down. It's really handy for managing the dozens of modes in Krita, I just have 5~6 favourites and I can ignore the rest, but still access them easily on the rare occasions when I need them.
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Message: 3 Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:10:58 +0200 From: Stojan Dimitrovski <sdimitrovski@...400...> Subject: [Inkscape-devel] GSoC13: Text Tool Improvements To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Message-ID: <CALTcmgnhPXwOv+9tFNO3A+7G7nK7sYOw2V1u1euT2LMhCuVtvA@...401...> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Hello everyone,
I'm Stojan Dimitrovski, a sophomore from Macedonia. I'm currently studying Computer Science at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.
I am considering applying for Inkscape on GSoC13.
I have a few ideas on improving the current text tool, particularly its user interface and some of its underlying features and implementation.
Here are some of those ideas:
- Typefaces' names should be rendered in the glyphs they describe if such exist. Example: Helvetica should be rendered in Helvetica, Garamond in Garamond, etc. Icon typefaces are rendered by the fallback GUI typeface on the system.
- There should be a live preview / comparison of typefaces interface which will allow for a better and faster typeface selection. Inspired by typeface pickers like the one in TypeKit or similar.
- There should be a character-preview of a typeface, which will show all of the glyphs in a typeface that are defined for it (and make it easy for those glyphs to be inserted into text). This is primarily useful when using icon typefaces (like Font Awesome from Twitter Bootstrap fame).
- Improved handling of different variants, weights, styles of typefaces. (Current implementation is a bit flaky handling this.)
- Implement a system for SVG font typesetting (actually be able to use the SVG fonts to render text inside Inkscape).
- Improve the SVG font interfaces, they really need some love.
I'd like to hear your suggestions and comments before I embark on doing mockups of the interface and thinking about the implementation.
I should also mention that I'm fluent in the technologies that Inkscape uses, especially in GTK+ (2, 3), GObject, GLib, C / C++. I have general knowledge of the SVG standard.
I've been using Inkscape since version 0.45 and have an understanding of its features and workflow.
The free-software movement, communities and development philosophies are not new to me.
Regards, Stojan Dimitrovski