Re: [ELPA] Add new 'show-font' package?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Protesilaos Stavrou <info@protesilaos.com>
> Cc: philipk@posteo.net, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2024 10:23:49 +0300
> 
> > From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> > Date: Fri,  6 Sep 2024 10:16:30 +0300
> 
> > [... 11 lines elided]
> 
> >> All I need is to figure out how to get/guess the name of a font
> >> based on the file name (ideally without depending on an external program
> >> that may not be installed on the user's end).
> >
> > Why do you need that?  IME, users don't care about file names of the
> > fonts.
> 
> Imagine the user has just downloaded a font in "~/Downloads" and tries
> to visit it.

That is only relevant to fonts that are not yet installed, which is a
separate use case, and IMO needs a different handling and perhaps also
different UI.  For now, AFAIU you are working on fonts that are
already installed, and for those most users will not know the file
names (nor will care about them).

> The idea is to get the font family out of this file and check if it
> exists on the system. If it exists, then we perform the preview of
> the font, otherwise we inform the user that the font called FONT is
> not installed (and then suggest to install it, but I will do that
> later).

This concept surprises me, since the tools and commands which I've seen
that allow users to preview a font show the list of installed fonts,
and then allow selecting a font from that list.  In which case the
font's file name is not very relevant.  Moreover, some font files can
have several different font families, in which case a file name will
not unequivocally determine the font.