You choose font family, say, DejaVu Sans and normal face

Since DejVu Sans also has Bold and ExtraLight faces, when you choose "bolder", Inkscape uses Bold face, if you then choose "lighter", it goes back to normal and then to ExtraLight face. With "italic" enabled it will only cycle between Oblique and Bold Oblique, since there is no ExtraLight Oblique right now.

...

http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/8519/textstylesdq3.png

(eww)

It's not implemented right now, because we need help from Pango (http://www.pango.org/). And at latest Libre Graphics Meeting in May it was discussed with Behdad from Pango team.

Alright, alright, I think I get it more. It's fine for keyboard, I suggest just going with Ctrl (or Alt) and the directional keys in text mode. They don't seem to be taken in text mode. Simple right?

For the top level interface though, there's the problem of what takes precedence. The drop-down can still be used, but the available values of one would depend on the available values for the other, as you've given with the example of Italics. And I Really doubt people would want to see a check box system.

Ah great, I just took a look at the Pango manual. There's a whole series of bold values in there And stretch (and a few other things. What, pray tell, is "font mask gravity"?

Well, fortunately, there are only 3 values of Italics: normal, oblique and italic, so that can be the starter value: once you've chosen one of those, the available bold and stretch values pop out, all of which could still be set to a slider interface. A button somewhere could show a matrix of what's available in each mode (...).

Have you set a date for when you'll be discussing with the Pango people? It'd be a Lot easier to think up an interface if I actually knew what needs to be implemented. As I've said, keyboard-wise, just go with modifier key + directional arrows. Up-down for bold, right-left for stretch (hey, that's pretty intuitive!).

For the rest though...

With such modular typeface engine, we could have fonts where you can modify stuff like how bold you want your font - though obviously only on fonts generated with the same engine.

Nice concept, except people will probably be expecting a lot more than the modifiable fonts. On well. :(

Anyway, I have to log off for today. One of these days I may try to look into Pango more, but that'd take some time since I really don't know much about fonts. Unless someone else knows how to deal with the issue instead? :)