[Fontconfig] Nimbus Sans L Condensed

[Felix Miata]

On 2008/03/05 13:59 (GMT-0500) Bob Tennent apparently typed:

>>|>Felix Miata wrote:

>>|> But applications like Firefox don't see it.

>>|I did more checking. FF can see it, assuming correct system configuration to
>>|serve it up via fontconfig.
>>|https://bugzilla.novell.com/attachment.cgi?id=198668 is from Mandriva
>>|Cooker, which matches back at least as far as v2007.0. 

> I can't access a bugzilla.novell bug 198668.

Try again. If you got the image, you can get the regular public access
version. It's very slow to get a first connect, but then behaves more or less
normally for https. https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=367188

> That attachment looks like
> a screenshot of Firefox displaying a jpeg.

It's a jpeg of FF2 displaying the Novell bug's testcase URL.

> I've looked at the Mandriva
> source rpm for fontconfig and I don't see anything related to Condensed.
> Have they patched Firefox?

FF3B3 from Mozilla.org behaves essentially the same as the distro's FF2. The
difference is that Mandriva has a different Nimbus font package that includes
the condensed variant as a 100% width separate font.

> If it can be done using fontconfig, how? Surely someone on this list
> would be able to say.  I can certainly match it using

> :family="Nimbus Sans L":width=75

> but how to make it look like a font-family to Firefox?

I think if fontconfig had an alias set up for it FF would have no problem
using it.

>  >|It doesn't work in
>  >|any other
>  >|distros I checked, but Mandriva apparently has proven it possible.

>  >|KDE seems to think it's a TT font, but I suppose that's a bug, since
>  >|the only
>  >|such font I can locate in the fonts trees in /usr is n019043l.pfb.

> On my Fedora system, Nimbus Sans L Condensed doesn't show up at all in
> KDE.

Watch the Novell bug's resolution, then consider following it up with
something similar in Fedora's bugzilla and/or manually doing whatever is
required to fix the Novell bug.

The problem is that it should solve the problem for systems under your direct
control, but is that your original problem? What about the rest of Linux FF
users? Maybe a fontconfig enhancement bug to include a default alias for it
will be better solution than individual bugs for each distro.

Another good long-term solution might be if "condensed" could be another
property added to font-variant in the CSS specs.
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-fonts/#font-variant
-- 
"Let us not love with words or in talk only.
Let us love by what we do." 1 John 3:18 NLV

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata  ***  http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/