Subject: bug#59347: 29.0.50; `:family` face setting ignored

From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2022 17:29:26 +0000

(Mille excuses - not following this thread.
Ignore if irrelevant.)

Does some of the "problem" figuring out what to
do here perhaps come from the (misguided?)
decision to name some faces (basic/common ones,
no less) after particular face/font attributes,
such as "bold"?  Is it a good idea to have such
faces?

Maybe that's considered unavoidable, as these
are so basic/common that their names can't
really be based on any particular _use_ of the
face?  We could have an `emphasis' face, but
face `italic' is apparently meant to really
express/~hard-code "italic" appearance instead.

Nevertheless, isn't this perhaps at the root of
the problem - trying to decide how to deal with
a face whose name shouts "bold" or "fixed pitch"?

We've only got a few such appearance-name faces.
We don't have a face called "ten-point", for
instance.  Do we really need/want to have _any_
such faces?  (Abstracting from an already-sailed
argument.)

If such faces were named neutrally (e.g. `foo')
would there still be a problem/discussion here?
____

As for grouping into families: is the intention
to hard-code such groups or let users/code do
the grouping?  Is Stefan's idea to give users
and code some control over this?