[Fontconfig] A question about font styles

[Owen Taylor]

On Mon, 2005-03-07 at 14:22 -0800, Keith Packard wrote:
> Around 16 o'clock on Mar 7, Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> > Perhaps the name PangoFontDescription is confusing. It doesn't describe
> > a font (or face), rather it is a description of the needs of an
> > application to Pango. So, there would never be a reason to include
> > informative information in it.
> 
> Thanks for the clarification.
> 
> I see several options for pango then:
> 
> 	1)	"face name" wins
> 	2)	abstract style/weight wins
> 	3)	last set wins
> 	4)	Attempt to merge face name and style/weight values
> 		(so a face name of 'black' and a style of 'italic' would
> 		yield a black italic font).
> 
> 4) seems likely to be fragile and cause weird effects when faced with 
> unusual fonts.  of 1) and 2), I suggest that 1) is a better choice as your 
> abstractions may never capture all of the possible variations (outline 
> anyone?) present in the 'face name'.  So, that leaves 3).  I think it's a 
> poor choice as it makes the face_name="italic", weight="bold" case very 
> confusing, and leaves us with an imperative spec rather than a declarative 
> one.

Well, I still haven't changed my opinion away from:

 5) Don't add "face name", do whatever munging on fontconfig output
    is necessary to create artificial family names.

Though I'm somewhat worried that this isn't efficiently implementable
and would require shadowing the entire fontconfig font database.

Regards,
							Owen