idea Sort font styles by weight in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

Sort font styles by weight

wayfaringrob — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 20:59:04 GMT

Any chance we can get some rhyme or reason in the font style pulldown?

I can never find what I'm looking for. Some typefaces, like this one, have upwards of a dozen styles to choose from and they are ordered seemingly randomly. It takes way longer than it should to find what you need. Most of the time when selecting an alternate weight, I'm looking to go up or one down, or I'm looking for one in particular. When they're jumbled like this, it takes more time than necessary. Despite showing a cursor, you also can't type to select one like you can for every other pulldown that allows for type.

It would be preferable to sort these by weight similar to how Adobe applications sort them, or provide a user-defined sort tool.

Thank you.

Re: Sort font styles - Status changed to: Needs Clarification

CraigWilliams — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 16:47:53 GMT

They are sorted by style trait that is written into the font. The order is Regular, then Bold, then Italic with the rest following. This is done to prioritize Regular but it all depends on how the font author has categorized the style. For Proxima Nova, Medium and Black are classified as types of "Regular" which why they appear above Bold styles.

You'd prefer alphabetical?

Re: Sort font styles

wayfaringrob — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 18:15:41 GMT

@CraigWilliams Ideally, in order of actual weight. I understand that they may be in some sort of order that makes sense to the developer, but in practice, it's very random, as you noted. In the below example, the order is functionally all over the place:

Adobe has this figured out. Here's the same font in Illustrator:

Only one error in theirs - thin and hairline italic are flipped.

Extending the list to be longer so you can see them all at once would also help (I see no reason for keeping it so small, requiring scrolling), as would displaying the names in their respective style.

Re: Sort font styles

CraigWilliams — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 20:48:39 GMT

It's not random - it's what the font author specified in one classification system. Weight is another system - the with increased mouse travel for commonly used weights.

Re: Sort font styles

wayfaringrob — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 20:56:24 GMT

I understand that it's not random according to that classification system, but it feels random in practice. Does the order of the fonts presented seem sensible to you? It seems that that is the wrong classification system to use, then, which is what I'm trying to point out. I will clarify this in the idea title and description; please reopen the idea. Thank you.

Re: Sort font styles by weight

wayfaringrob — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 01:34:27 GMT

@CraigWilliams What further clarification is needed?

Re: Sort font styles by weight - Status changed to: Open

WendyHarrison — Wed, 08 May 2024 22:32:23 GMT

Re: Sort font styles by weight

wayfaringrob — Tue, 14 May 2024 17:05:15 GMT

Glad this is reopened, but Esri staff's habit of locking ideas and preventing kudos for years on end has got to stop @CraigWilliams @WendyHarrison

Re: Sort font styles by weight

JesseCloutier — Tue, 21 May 2024 19:54:15 GMT

@wayfaringrob, when sharing comments like this, please take care to consider whether how they’re presented contributes to the helpful, kind environment we collectively strive to maintain for all Community users—customers and staff alike. Esri staff who participate in this platform invest themselves in making Esri users more successful in their work by making choices that are thoughtful and informed. The many factors that go into idea review and selection inevitably means there will be instances where users are dissatisfied (or don’t agree) with how something has been handled. We don’t consider ourselves perfect, but please know that we handle our users’ ideas in good faith and make decisions based on our goal to continuously improve Esri’s products.