Font selection

[fbsadler]

I'm having trouble selecting fonts with iSilo on my PDA (visor neo).


Problem 1:
- When iSilo is freshly installed on my PDA, document text is displayed using the "Device Font" (the one shipped with my Visor). This is good; I like this font for most of my documents.

- However, When I create a new font on my PDA using the iSiloX "Make Font" feature, this behavior changes. Now, all of my iSilo documents are displayed with this iSilo font.

- I have tried using the "Font Options" dialog box in iSilo to change "Default" to "Device font" but that has no effect.

- So how do I go back to using the "Device font" on my PDA after I've added iSilo fonts?


Problem 2:
- I can't seem to select a FontBucket font from my HTML document. The syntax I'm using is:

<SPAN style='font-family:"{fb}Sashimi:FontBucketDB"'>
Font Bucket Sashimi characters
</SPAN>

- Am I using the right syntax for the font name? Or is something else wrong?


For reference, I've included my test html document (as text).

[iSilo]

The Default font only applies to text runs that do not specify a font type. For example, the Default font would apply to plain text files and Palm Doc files since those files have no inherent method to specify formatting information. So try changing the Sans Serif font first and then the Serif font. By default, documents in iSilo format will be displayed using the Sans Serif font.

iSilo supports three font families: sans serif, serif, and monospace.

Note though that the font that you choose for the Default font does not serve as the default for each of the families. The setting for the Default font only applies to text runs that do not specify a font type as explained above.

To set the defaults for each of the families, you need to select the font you want to use for each of the families, check the option Also set as defaults, and then tap OK. So if you want the default to be the device font, do this:

While viewing a document, go to the Options menu and tap Font.
In the Font Options dialog, set all of the Default, Sans Serif, Serif, and Monospace fields to Device font, and check Also set as defaults.
Tap OK.
For a given document, when the setting for a given font family field as shown in the Font Options dialog shows Use defaults, it will use the font you set using the steps above. Otherwise, the selected font will be used for the font family.

iSilo documents themself support the three font families of sans serif, serif, and monospace. A run of text can specify its font family, but it can not specify which specific font to use. So you can not specify the Sashimi font that you have in your example. The following two spans show how to set the font to be either the serif or sans-serif font family in HTML source:

<span style="font-family: serif">This span uses a serif font.</span>
<span style="font-family: sans-serif">This span uses a sans-serif font.</span>

[fbsadler]

Thank you for your detailed explaination. It really did help me figure out what's going on. However, I do have a couple of suggestions for your future consideration. Both suggestions have to do with Font Options dialog and related features.

FYI, in the grand scheme of things, I'm sure these suggestions are not real high on the priority list. However, I do believe they would take an incremental step toward making a more usable and easier-to-understand product.


Suggestion 1:

One thing that caused some of my confusion was the overloading of the word "Default" in the Font Options dialog. I'm sure you'll agree that anytime there's a "Default font" for the "Default font", there's bound to be some confusion!

On this dialog box, might I suggest that it would be less confusing if the font-field named "Default" was changed to something more descriptive. Since this field specifies the font to be used for "plain text files and Palm Doc files", maybe you rename the field to "Text/Doc Files" or "non-html" or "non-web-page" or something similar. I think a simple name change like this can go a long way towards eliminating confusion.


Suggestion 2:

Let's say I open an iSilo file on my PDA and the Font Options dialog shows "Use Default" for one of the 4 font-family options. As you describe above, "Use Default" indicates that iSilo will pick a specific font to use for that particular font-family in this file.

The question that came to my mind over and over while I was trying to figure this stuff out was "Exactly which font is iSilo picking for the default?" Many fonts look similar and it can be quite hard to verify which is really being used.

My suggestion is that there should to be a way to display the actual font name used when defaulting. Depending upon where you keep track of your information, this might either be as a "document property" (exactly which fonts are being used for this document) or a "global property" (what defaults will be used).

Thanks again.