Allow separate font selections for Render and Editor panes

[ag-eitilt]

I do prefer using a monospace font in the editor, both since it emphasizes the manuscript status of it all, and because it's what I'm used to from looking at code/vim for the vast majority of everything else I do. However, I do also make use of en vs em dashes, and all four types of space¹ (I'd be using five if you provided an entry method for either U+2002 or U+2003; as it is I just fall back on double-spacing the ends of sentences), and those distinctions aren't fully visible with the monospacing as it is, at least without a very lucky font find. Alternatively, reading back through a draft using a different font is enough to make my brain pick out a few things that it didn't previously, and being able to easily trigger that would be helpful even without spacing shenanigans.

What I'd like to be able to do is continue typing everything in monospace, hit Ctrl+R to pull up the rendered view, but then have that view use a non-monospace font:

(Mockup from my notes since I've not migrated my writing over yet.)

I don't know if the way you're using the QT widgets would make doing so tricky, but barring problems at that level it seems from the outside like all that's required would be to add another font selection in the preferences, maybe another theme-color selection for completeness' sake, and hook the rendered-view pane up to pull from there rather than from the same place as the editor.

Footnotes

1. For the curious: Normal space between words; non-breaking space after abbreviations, before em dashes, and other places where there definitely shouldn't be a line break; non-breaking thin space according to French standards² (really happy with your solution to (for French text) non breaking thin space before some chars #703, by the way) and between multi-part abbreviations (e. g. "i. e."); and idiosyncratically thin space on the parenthetical side of em dashes. There's definitely an argument that that's overkill during the manuscript, but it does allow me to write scripts which specifically target a specific division -- for example "split the document into individual sentences" -- which I can then use to analyze the style of the piece while editing. ↩

2. According to my occasional historical-typography digging, English and French originally had very similar spacing patterns, and it was only after typewriters that the English shifted the punctuation the half-character left and the French a half-character right. And then English lost the double-spaced sentences anyway. I'm not entirely sold on that since typewriters as the cause of double-spacing is a bit dubious for other reasons, but it's a good story and I like how clear it makes everything look, so I'm sticking to it. ↩

[vkbo]

I'd be using five if you provided an entry method for either U+2002 or U+2003; as it is I just fall back on double-spacing the ends of sentences

Feel free to add a separate feature request for that. I can certainly add it, but I don't think there are any sensible keyboard shortcuts left. However, optionally auto-replacing double space with em space could be an option. Possibly a setting "Replace double space with" and the options "Ignore", "En Space" and "Em Space"?

What I'd like to be able to do is continue typing everything in monospace, hit Ctrl+R to pull up the rendered view, but then have that view use a non-monospace font

As you may know, it isn't intended as a render view, but as a side panel to view notes when writing. However, it does render the text markup so it can function as a render view, so it's a possible use case. I'm reluctant to strengthen the impression that it's primarily a preview panel though. Not to say I won't add the option your request. I just need to frame it more generally.

I don't know if the way you're using the QT widgets would make doing so tricky, but barring problems at that level it seems from the outside like all that's required would be to add another font selection in the preferences

The should be no problem on the Qt side of things. I just need to make sure we don't run into issues with #1776 since these features are related and would need to cooperate. Allowing multiple fonts at the same time in the editor is an issue due to the plain text nature of it, but for the viewer it would be reasonably straightforward. I'll need to look into the best way to combine these features.

maybe another theme-color selection for completeness' sake, and hook the rendered-view pane up to pull from there rather than from the same place as the editor.

The dedicated document theme setting is going away in the upcoming 2.8 release. The theme system has been rewritten and modernised. The current set of UI and document themes will be replaced by two full UI dark and light theme options, with a new button on the side bar to alternate between them, or optionally sync with the OS dark/light setting.

[ag-eitilt]

What I'd like to be able to do is continue typing everything in monospace, hit Ctrl+R to pull up the rendered view, but then have that view use a non-monospace font

As you may know, it isn't intended as a render view, but as a side panel to view notes when writing. However, it does render the text markup so it can function as a render view, so it's a possible use case. I'm reluctant to strengthen the impression that it's primarily a preview panel though. Not to say I won't add the option your request. I just need to frame it more generally.

I wasn't aware of that, good to know. I haven't been thinking of it as a "Print preview" view, but I did have the idea that it was deliberately providing a preview/validation for the formatting syntax (before any layout concerns get involved) in addition to allowing the separate pane for notes. In that case I walk back my request slightly: it would still be nice, but I certainly wouldn't want feature creep just for features' sake.

maybe another theme-color selection for completeness' sake, and hook the rendered-view pane up to pull from there rather than from the same place as the editor.

The dedicated document theme setting is going away in the upcoming 2.8 release. The theme system has been rewritten and modernised. The current set of UI and document themes will be replaced by two full UI dark and light theme options, with a new button on the side bar to alternate between them, or optionally sync with the OS dark/light setting.

Nice, looking forward to it!