Contributor knb

There are already many free fonts available for ubuntu.
Unfortunately, many of them are incomplete. There must be an easier way to display and remove bad fonts from a system.

I know that there is the "gnome-specimen" software tool which finds most fonts installed on the machine, and which can display selected fonts on the screen. However, this little software tool is not good enough.

Here is a rationale for this, given in brainstorm mode.

Note that I am a German user, and my generic test sentence is not "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
but
"Zwölf Boxkämpfer jagen Viktor quer über den großen Sylter Deich."

When you try a sentence like this, it is immediately obvious that many fonts don't even have umlauts such as "ä", "ü", "Ü", or sharp-s "ß" etc. Thus these fonts are completely useless to me. I would like to get rid of them. Or I'd like to annotate or tag them. Create something like a short-list of prefrered fonts.
Or maybe fonts should come with a rich set of metadata. Which can be browsed.

Moreover I would prefer to not even have such fonts installed in the first place.

I think this has quite a few implications for the Ubuntu and the Open Office installers. Perhaps it can be done, though.

It's fantastic that Ubuntu is available in so many languages.

It would be really cool if there were a simple way to have two language packs installed at the same time and simple way to switch between them while using the operating system.

For example, if I set up a Ubuntu computer for a refugee family here in the States that is still learning English, they could use Ubuntu in English, but if they did not understand something they could click an icon or something to "switch on" their native language.

Imagine how helpful being able to compare and contrast a tool tip in two different languages would be to someone learning to speak a new language.

This could make the computer easier to use while also serving as a valuable and practical tool in learning a new language. This could benefit a whole range of students of new languages.

Even though things are simple, Windows uses get lost. These are some points the tutorial could cover...



____How to configure internet connection (Typing “sudo pppoeconf” in the terminal is easy but not intuitive, it should to be written somewhere)

____Where are the Windows files

____How to set up restricted drivers

____How to configure screen resolution

____How to install and uninstall programs (there are many ways to install programs in Linux: add/remove, synaptic, apt-get, and GDebi... it can be confusing in the beginning)

____Setting tracker indexing on (once you install Ubuntu and search for your files it simply doesn't work and nothing tells you need to set the indexing on)

____Automatic mount hard drives on startup (unless there is some technical reason for not doing so. If they can't be automatically mounted then there should be an item indicating the need to mount the drivers before accessing them)

____Where to solve problems ( links to support sites in the Firefox favorites could help...)



These are some ideas for the tutorial... everyone can contribute with other ideas or reject some points.


[....]

In "Save As..." or "Open File" dialog boxes, add an easy-to-find option to hide Directories with names started with ".", such as for instance ".ssh" ".cpan" ".config"
(where users are not supposed to save anything into, anyway).

Over time, there are just too many of these directories getting added by lots of applications.

These days, when I go into my home directory to save a file, or to open a file, I have to scroll down a few screens full get to the first folders which are not .dot folders . Is there a way to add a checkbox for specifying "no .dot folders" (or similar), to hide these .dotted directories.

I know it is probably a gnome issue, but maybe it can be fixed easily.