Re: [Libreoffice] [PATCH] Remove options "Show preview of fonts" and "Show font history"

Hi Michael, Pedro,

On 23 December 2011 11:43, Pedro <pedlino@gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael Meeks-2 wrote
> >       I tend to agree that removing pointless options, *particularly* from
> > the user-interface is an unmitigated good ;-)

That's the spirit.

> >       What I'd really like to see is an "about:config" style UI (that doesn't
> > suck ;-) that lets people see & edit all of the obscure tweakables to
> > their heart's content: at least for those tweakables that make at least
> > some sense to some small population of users.

Right, that's part of the plan, too. We named it the AOP, or Advanced
Options Panel, but it is not specced out yet.


> Removing options which are already implemented and working doesn't make any
> sense. It's the same form of "GUI dictatorship" as the Ribbon ;)

Options always come at a price, namely that they
a) can clutter the interface
b) make it necessary to check if they still work (and write new code
if they don't any more) and this is only becoming harder the more
options there are.

I would like to take the stand that we should not shy away from
(completely) removing options, if they were introduced only to not
have to think about a good implementation. I will also take the stand
that it is not a problem if LibreOffice became /a bit/ less flexible,
but better overall in consequence.


> In the particular case of the Fonts I can see that a user on a low resource
> PC would prefer to quickly see a list with the font names instead of waiting
> for each font to be drawn... (I'm guessing here, luckily none of my PCs is
> THAT low resource, but Fonts are usually a problem under Windows at least)

I had not yet thought about the performance problem, but you're right,
there is a bit of a problem -- under Win, on a 2.6GHz C2D (I'd say
that's reasonably powerful), the fonts don't appear immediately, but
one after another, so filling the list takes roughly half a second. Is
there anyone who would want to work on optimising that?

Regards,

Astron.