The current help provided for the Fonts dialog is pathetic--you can see it here: http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/extensions/help/resources/locale/en-US/c s_nav_prefs_appearance.html#fonts The font engine is a very robust and fault-tolerant subsystem which has been the focus of a great deal of effort. It includes, amongst other things, a number of hidden prefs that allow tuning the engine even further (e.g., the "font banning" feature on Linux--just to give an example). But it would be techie to explain all the regular expressions involved in setting such a pref and the other wizardry of the font engine on the common help for Fonts. But, it is a fact that the appearance of Fonts constitutes one of the primary things that leaves a lasting impression on the user (skins are the other things). So I am filing this bug to suggest the support of an "about:fonts" where more details can be given for advanced users. In particular, information on MathFonts needed for quality rendering of MathML can fit in such a place. Another advantage of this is that the (pathetic) help on Fonts can end with a prompt like: "For more information on Fonts, click about:fonts". Also, about:fonts can include dynamic elements to be constructed based on the fonts currently installed on the user' system. A spec for what should go in such an about:fonts might be needed to start with.

about: as a location for help is unusual; I'm not sure I agree that this is the right place for it. rbs, I understand your frustration that you've put a lot of work into the Fonts subsystem and no-one ever gets to find out about it. I agree - that sucks. I believe this problem can be solved by a combination of setting sensible default parameters and fallbacks (as rbs has now implemented), rejigging the Fonts dialog to make it easier to understand, use and configure in the common case, and providing a Help button on that dialog. But I'd like to hear mpt's views (which, given his bugmail backlog, should appear in about a week.) Gerv

>rbs, I understand your frustration that you've put a lot of work into the Fonts >subsystem and no-one ever gets to find out about it. I agree - that sucks. Thanks for your pat in the back. But that wasn't really what I meant to extrapolate to. As you know, fonts are a big issue for MathML. I filed the bug to kick off some general thinking on the matter of help about fonts. The 'alert' that I added when important MathML fonts are missing isn't too helpful in terms of informing the user as to what to do next. It needs to point to something that can give more info, and that can possibly talk to the font subsystem to provide dynamic elements to be used to build up the page itself. So you font lovers, do chime in... Is pointing to a static help page enough? Is there something that can do what the about:* do (e.g., the dynamic about:config, about:plugins) even if it isn't called about:fonts?

move to future

Gerv's right. The sophistication of a feature should be measured by how little UI it has, how little help it needs, and how few people notice it. This sucks if you're a programmer looking for your fifteen pixels (or, in this case, 15 screenfuls) of fame, but let's not make Mozilla Tend to Suck any more, please. Where a feature of a program *does* need help, the fact that the program happens to be a Web browser should not be an excuse for putting the help in the main window. It should be in the help window, just like all the other help. (FWIW, I think <about:plugins> shouldn't exist either, but that is not nearly as bizarre as <about:fonts> would be.)

This doesn't belong in internationalization. Not sure where it does belong, but Help Documentation seems a good start.