The "Type" field could show clearer - and more - information
(Inspired to revisit this by looking at #59's screenshot....)
The "Type:" field in the font-info block could say more, and it would be helpful in the short and long term if it did.
For example, it just says "TrueType" there, but Segoe UI has a bunch of OpenType functionality. So merely saying TrueType is not particularly informative. Similarly, a lot of users are confused about what ".otf" files can or cannot contain, and think that they aren't allowed to be TrueType. That's because "TrueType" and "OpenType" are not mutually exclusive. If the font manager just labels a font file as one-or-the-other, it's not really accurate, and the misunderstanding can lead to trouble.
Poking at the code, it looks from here as if the app is just querying basic GIO get_content_type()
or something like that? Is that correct?
If so, that's probably just looking at the filename or something similarly broad.
It would be a lot better to expose more of the contents of the font file as the "Type", to avoid confusion as well as to help users find what they want.
For instance,
- "Type: Outline font, SVG glyphs"
- "Type: Outline font, TrueType glyphs, variable"
- "Type: Outline font, PostScript CFF glyphs"
- "Type: Bitmap font, Apple sbix glyphs"
etc.
So if you're hunting for an SVG font, or for an emoji font, the Type field at the top of the window can help guide you in the right direction.
Clearly that runs up into "tell the user it's an Emoji font" as well as "tell the user about the OpenType features" and "tell the user it's a color font" so lining up and combining those various nuggets of information here in a cohesive way would be really, really good.
Yes, the previews and other bits are all also helping there. But if all it says at the top of the window is the less-than-helpful "TrueType", then that field's taking up unnecessary real estate.
Plus, if nothing else, there are a whole lotta bugs getting filed all across this mixed-up ole world that end up, at some point in the discussion, with somebody saying "this isn't an OpenType font, it's a TrueType font" ... so even incrementally fixing that sort of misconception by exposing more complete data would improve the state of the world as a whole.