[Fontconfig] A question about font styles

[Ambrose Li]

Hi,

I recently filed a bug in gimp related to font selection, and
was told that it is currently technically impossible to fix. So
I wonder if the problem might be at the fontconfig level.

Precisely, I've got a lot of commercial Type 1 fonts; fontconfig
has never been able to handle them properly (from a user's
viewpoint, that is). I gave an example in my gimp bug report
(gnome bug #169314):

The typeface "Apollo MT" has 9 fonts, corresponding to
regular, italic, and semi-bold (each with three variants:
lining figures, old-style figures, and "expert"). Fc-list
correctly lists all 9 fonts. However, gimp cannot distinguish
between the different variants of each style, so in gimp,
only 3 fonts (regular, italic, and semi-bold with lining
figures only) are available.

I was told that "there's not much that can be done currently,
since the fonts don't differentiate themselves enough for
pango to generate unique font descriptions for them."

So my question is,

- Is the "style" attribute returned by fc-list useful at all
for differentiating between fonts (for the purpose of
font selection)?

- If the above is no, would this be a bug in the fontconfig
level? At the pango level? or higher up? (Gnome bug 95043
seems to suggest that it's a bug at the fontconfig level.)

Thanks very much.

Best regards,
Ambrose