[Fontconfig] A question about font styles

[Keith Packard]

Around 14 o'clock on Mar 7, Owen Taylor wrote:

> Would you count it as expected that:
> 
>  desc = pango_font_face_describe (face);
>  pango_font_description_set_weight (desc, PANGO_WEIGHT_BOLD);
> 
>  /* Use desc */
> 
> Ignores the call to set_weight? (because describe() sets some 
> "face name" field) 

(did you mean "style name"?)

Hmm.  Sequence doesn't exist in fontconfig.  I think that might make a 
difference for the user...

If you think of the style name as restricting the available variants to the
selected style, or selecting a sub-family with the 'postscript name', then
the 'set_weight' call is no more ignored than if face was already black;
it's requesting the 'bold' variant of 'Cloister Old Style Roman' which
doesn't happen to have a bold variant.

Consider the fonts I just got -- named Cloister Old Style Roman, Cloister 
Old Style Italic, Cloister Old Style Bold and Cloister Old Style Bold 
Italic.  All of these advertised a single style named 'Roman' (the humor 
of a 'Roman' 'Italic' font clearly escaped the publisher).

If the 'description' returned is used by the application to present 
information to the user and to select fonts, then we have a problem as it 
should contain the style name so the user can read it, but it shouldn't 
have the style name as a constraint on the selection.  Perhaps those two 
notions could be separated somehow?

-keith


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 228 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/fontconfig/attachments/20050307/e813d23b/attachment.pgp