Feature suggestion: Fonts Gallery

[steve.ledger]

The Font Gallery needs some improvements as well.
1) allow alphabetical navigation in the gallery

I my mind, the purpose of the 'gallery' is for a visual view/selection of the font by 'face' rather than by name. Your eye is drawn to the font face, not the name, which is what a gallery all about.
And, unlike the font list, is not a pre selector of a font.
The font list on the info bar is your alphabetically selectable font lister.
Why duplicate functions with the font list and the font gallery when they are clearly mean't to serve different purposes?

2) allow scrolling with arrows and pageup/pagedown

Fast scrolling with mouse wheel seems sufficient to me.

If you want more features in a single UI, why not use accesD's (dmitry) free FontSeeker?? He wrote this for Xara users to use for free. **

http://xaraxtv.at.tut.by/2tg/fs.png

I'm amazed that no one has caught on to MWSnap, a powerful little freeware program for screen capturing.

I'm also suprised no-one has made mention of FastStone Capture which, up until very recently was freeware. I know I can't work without it.
The most recent free version is still available for download here

** Please make sure your AV & Malware software is up to date as there appears to be a couple of exploits infecting Dmitry's website at the moment (KASPERSKY Web AntiVirus has picked up two trojans)
I have alerted Dmitry to this.

[Jon G]

I my mind, the purpose of the 'gallery' is for a visual view/selection of the font by 'face' rather than by name. Your eye is drawn to the font face, not the name, which is what a gallery all about.
And, unlike the font list, is not a pre selector of a font.
The font list on the info bar is your alphabetically selectable font lister.
Why duplicate functions with the font list and the font gallery when they are clearly mean't to serve different purposes?

Alphabetical navigation is standard Windows behaviour, not a special feature of the drop-down list. Both font tools do serve the same purpose, by the way. The Gallery exists just because the main tool is so limited visually.

It takes 30 scrolls of the mousewheel to get to fonts starting with B, and I plan to invest in more type libraries as soon as bugdet allows.

Dmitry's fine tool can't change the typeface of an existing text object, and opening a separate program to select fonts (and having then 3 faulty tools to do a simple task) is hardly optimal solution.

[steve.ledger]

..Both font tools do serve the same purpose, by the way. The Gallery exists just because the main tool is so limited visually.

I have to disagree there...

It takes 30 scrolls of the mousewheel to get to fonts starting with B, and I plan to invest in more type libraries as soon as bugdet allows.

OK, in your case as you appear to have a great deal of fonts installed, I can see this becoming a chore for you.
How is your machine boot time by the way?

Dmitry's fine tool can't change the typeface of an existing text object, and opening a separate program to select fonts (and having then 3 faulty tools to do a simple task) is hardly optimal solution.

That's a bit harsh. Because they don't work they way Jon G would like hardly equates to them being 'faulty'.

Unless something is plainy broken or has a repeatable bug which severely limits usage of the software I paid for - I just learn to work with what I have.
Besides, I really do think there are more important program features and improvements to the GUI for Xara to concentrate on for their next update or release. But who knows, perhaps your wish will come true

[Jon G]

How is your machine boot time by the way?

Strange question? I've never measured it, average I guess. Windows and most linuxes are generally very slow to start up, only my digital audio workstation starts reasonably fast, but it has most commonly used os features and services turned off. Fonts don't affect performance in any meaningful way. I have some 742 installed (includes weights), not much imo.

That's a bit harsh. Because they don't work they way Jon G would like hardly equates to them being 'faulty'.

I'ts not only what I personally like, but yes, maybe faulty can sound a bit harsh, sorry & thanks for mentioning. I'm not a native speaker, I meant to say that they all miss some important features and couldn't think of a better word.

And I also agree there are more important things to develop in Xara, but it's a good idea to bring up also some lesser issues. Some things are easy to implement, some things take time but when the devs have a list of user wishes, it's easy for them to sort out the mundane tasks and maybe squeeze quickies in the next update.

[ss-kalm]

And I also agree there are more important things to develop in Xara, but it's a good idea to bring up also some lesser issues. Some things are easy to implement, some things take time but when the devs have a list of user wishes, it's easy for them to sort out the mundane tasks and maybe squeeze quickies in the next update.

I sort of agree with Jon.

Take for example the dimensioning that was in a thread a few weeks ago. All the components to make dimensioning work are already in place. It's very low on the totem pole as new feature requests go, but in theory it's so easy to add that it could be implemented whilst adding other features - But only if Xara are aware it's something that the users would like to see.

[steve.ledger]

Fonts don't affect performance in any meaningful way. I have some 742 installed (includes weights), not much imo.

Ah but they can..
Of course the amount of boot delay and system performance lost is largely dependant on the hardware you are running XP on at the time.
However, there is an overhead to consider when installing many fonts.
Here's a chart from ThePCSpy showing the results of their tests on an XP machine last year
It is certainly possible to have too many fonts, they can cause problems, they can slow down your system and delay the launching of font using programs.
There's plenty of anecdotal and technical information on the web to support and explain this.
Some software, such as Adobe CS3 allows you to remove fonts from the Windows/fonts folder and put them into a special folder for CS3 [ C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign CS3\Fonts ] making them available to all CS3 applications but lightening the Windows overhead.
I mentioned recently in a thread how useful this might be if implimented within XaraXtreme.
Though having said this, I agree that your 742 fonts really isn't too many. I certainly have a few more than that myself

[Jon G]

That's very interesting - thanks!

I haven't noticed anything yet with the fonts I have. That 742 actually didn't include weights, but still seems be under the noticeable limit. There are a few crap freebies that can make room for better ones, but it's more of a financial than PC resource issue here :-D

[Soquili]

Jon the 742 fonts is not enough to affect your system.

In the past 1000 fonts would cause Windows 98 to have considerable slowdown.

Windows XP can handle approximately 3000 fonts before having very erratic problems including system slowdown.

One of my WinXP machines at home has about 1800 fonts installed.

[wW]

I've mentioned this before but I'd be happy if XPro fixed the galleries so they behaved LIKE THEY USE TO DO IN X1. The changes to the XPro galleries equate to NEW BEHAVIOR! They have been dummied down. The clipart gallery is un-usable in this current configuration, *PERIOD! It can be used for browsing the clipart that comes with the CD but considering we are using a "PRO product", it's not really required. *For me anyway...

With X1, I was able to use the window explorer for bitmap folders & ref. I'd use X1 for browsing my working Xara folders. Now, unable to do this in Xpro because of the "SAVE AS" Bug. When files start going to different folders & you end up with multiples of the same file in different locations, that's when I call it quits & find another solution.

Windows explorer is now used for browsing all Xara working folders. Which is a bit more time consuming, but at least it's behavior hasn't changed.

Regarding Fonts in XP. Don't know how many I have (too many) but if I cross the windows XP line, the default window font changes automatically to an unreadable font & I have to reboot to fix it.

[handrawn]

Hi Waldo

Pitching it a bit strong I think to call it a bug.

The thing about a clipart gallery is that is is meant for clipart

I can not see that it was ever meant for working files, nor to be used as a file browser - and as was mentioned when this was discussed elsewhere, your use of it that way was probably fairly unusual.

From the point of view of clipart, the new arrangement is preferable - at least to me - as it makes it far less easy to accidentally overwrite clipart - the stuff most of use the clipart gallery to access?