Philosophical questions about the fontNames

[Richard Gaskin]

Thanks for chiming in, Mark.  Would it be helpful to have a bug report 
on this, or should I wait to see what you find in your code review?

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems


Mark Waddingham wrote:
> On 2020-03-11 22:36, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode wrote:
>> Querying the fontNames includes:
>> 
>> (Default)
>> (Styled Text)
>> (Menu)
>> (Text)
>> (Message)
>> (Tooltip)
>> (System)
>> 
>> These are not font names, but constants the engine accepts so that we
>> can have good-looking, HIG-savvy UIs on multiple platforms.
>> 
>> But they're not font names.  They're not fonts at all.  They're engine
>> directives.
>> 
>> So should they be included in the fontNames?
>> 
>> (Yes, I know I can exclude them. I've been doing this a while, I can
>> do lots of things.  But if a newcomer wants to make a Fonts menu or
>> list she also needs to know the filter command, and why she needs to
>> use it to filter out things that aren't fonts. #learnability)
> 
> Haha - I noticed that at the top of Richmond's screenshot on the forums 
> and I had the same thought... I also had a sneaky suspicion you would 
> also comment on it!
> 
> I am inclined to agree with you - those font names are added explicitly 
> after fetching the list of font names from the system - so there isn't a 
> deeply technical reason why they are there.
> 
> I'll need to dig back to see if there is any internal discussion about 
> it from when the theme support was added. After all, it is useful for 
> the IDE to have those in the list, but it is also easy for it to add 
> them in its own code!
> 
> For all intents and purposes, they should never appear in a 
> 'user-settable' font list in any non-UI editing type application - so 
> the impact of changing it is probably next to zero.
> 
> Warmest Regards,
> 
> Mark.