More lay description for "Use old style figures"?

Jürgen Spitzmüller spitz at lyx.org
Tue Jul 14 06:34:50 UTC 2020


Am Montag, den 13.07.2020, 15:55 -0400 schrieb Scott Kostyshak:
> On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 06:28:56PM +0200, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:
> > Am Samstag, den 11.07.2020, 22:42 -0400 schrieb Scott Kostyshak:
> > > It would be nice to describe the feature in a way that LyX users
> > > who
> > > don't know anything about "old style figures" can immediately
> > > realize
> > > that they don't need to check those boxes or search for what they
> > > do.
> > > The tooltip did not help me. It says "Use old style instead of
> > > lining
> > > figures".
> 
> The argument that the term "is also what LibreOffice, Scribus,
> QuarkXPress, InDesign, and Word uses, and it's the term used in the
> OpenType specification" is a convincing one to me. I tested
> LibreOffice
> but could not find where in the dialogs it is mentioned. I thought I
> would find it in Format > Character, but did not.

Format > Character > Functions ...

Note that it is only listed there if the selected font provides old
style figures.

In that case, you can also select it directly by appending ":onum" to
the font name, e.g. "Noto Serif:onum"

> > Would this help?
> > 
> > "Use numerals with ascenders and descenders (Old Style Figures)
> > that fit more elegantly in lower-case text rather than numerals
> > with
> > constant upper-case height (Lining Figures)"
> 
> Not that much. As someone who doesn't know much about fonts, I really
> don't know from that description whether I should use the feature or
> invest the time to learn more about it. It helps a bit because it has
> the word "numerals" so at least I know we're talking about numerals,
> rather than "figures" which I associate with graphics.
> 
> It would be nice to have a term that users with more knowledge than I
> of
> fonts recognize but that users like me can at least realize they
> probably don't have to spend time figuring out what the feature does.
> Enrico's suggestion of "Use antique numerals" does that, and so does
> "Use medieval-style numerals". Perhaps we can add one of those to the
> tooltip? e.g., <<Also known as 'antique numerals', [insert your
> technical description]>>.

As you wish, but I don't think this will help many people. I really
doubt "antique numerals" and "medieval-style numerals" is so much more
known than "old style figures". I'd rather describe the feature.

> I guess the reason I was confused is that now in 2.4 we present three
> text boxes with "Use old style figures" instead of one since we allow
> customization for each font. This is a nice feature but it makes me
> think the option must be important since there are three text boxes
> for it. 

IMHO it is important, since I use old style figures wherever I can.
They are simply more suitable for numbers in running text.


> But Googling for "old style figures" and figuring out that I
> don't need the feature only takes a minute, and the user will
> probably
> remember that the next time; so it is not a big deal. Perhaps in the
> future if we add more customization (e.g., more features that can be
> customized by font) we can redesign the UI a bit to optimize the
> dialog
> for the average user but at the same time allow for more advanced
> customization.  Perhaps a checkbox "customize separately by font"? 

Now who is the "average user"? Actually I find it quite annoying in
LibreOffice that this important font feature is so much hidden that it
took me long to find out it is actually supported. Old style figures is
a core feature of font selection.

> But I am biased towards my own usage of LyX. Perhaps there are more
> users than I think that use one of the three (scale, options, "use
> old style figures") per font.
> 
> Thanks to everyone for the replies. I'm fine with leaving it as it
> is. I understand now that we should not rename the universally-used
> term for the option. I suppose the only thing we could consider is to
> add something like "antique numerals" in the tooltip.

As said, I think it does not help much. And it does not help at all in
localizations other than English, where people also might not be
familiar with the respective term (e.g., "Mediävalziffern" in German).

If we could rely on the tooltip font, we could add example figures, but
this requires osf to be provided in the font used for the tooltip.

Jürgen

> 
> Scott
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