[CentOS] Just need to vent

Alice Wonder alice at domblogger.net
Mon Jan 25 03:38:52 UTC 2016


On 01/24/2016 06:37 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:

> Why?  Why is it automatic that a text editor should be automatically
> monospace?  (Sure, I use gedit with a monospace font, but that doesn't
> mean it's not useful with a proportional font).

Because text editors are used to edit plain text files where the only 
formatting is intentional spaces, and that formatting only works when 
every character is the same width.

Things like tables etc. in plain text files do not display correctly 
when a variable width font is used.

Therefore when selecting a font to use with gedit, the list should be 
pruned to monospace fonts unless you specify you want other fonts.

With how many fonts are installed on a typical desktop system, needing 
to hunt through the list for the monospace fonts is simply not 
acceptable, especially when the selection list doesn't even specify 
which are monospace.

It is thus a poorly designed interface, as it makes it incredibly 
difficult to do what the vast majority of users need to do when 
selecting a font for use with the application.




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