[Openfontlibrary] Generating Font Samples

[Ed Trager]

Hi, Denis et al.,

Of course fontconfig's "fc-list" utility already provides most of this
kind of functionality, i.e.,

    ~> fc-list :lang=ja
              IPAUIGothic,IPA UIゴシック:style=Regular
              Unicode BMP Fallback SIL,Spanish Unicode BMP Fallback
SIL:style=Regular
              Sazanami Mincho,さざなみ明朝:style=Mincho-Regular,Regular
              WenQuanYi Zen Hei,文泉驛正黑,文泉驿正黑:style=Medium,中等
              ...

Continuing the discussion about creating an interactive fonts web
site, it would not be difficult to have a PHP, Python, or similar
web-based application just call fc-list to query which fonts supported
a given orthography.

As the fc-list output above suggests, human interpretation of the
result set is still needed. SIL's "Unicode BMP Fallback" does have a
glyph for every Japanese character, but would not really be a readable
choice for Japanese.  WenQuanYi Zen Hei also has Japanese characters,
but Japanese people may dislike the glyph styles since WenQuanYi is
really a Chinese font.  Nevertheless, using fc-list as an
off-the-shelf solution to start with makes sense.

Best -- Ed



On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 1:18 PM, Denis Jacquerye <moyogo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd be interested to implement a way to match fonts by what language
> they support.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Denis Moyogo Jacquerye
>
> 2008/5/21 Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com>:
>> 2008/5/21 Ed Trager <ed.trager at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> IMHO, anything less than this kind of interactivity no longer makes
>>> the grade (it goes without saying that the current OFLB site just
>>> fails completely).
>>
>> I agree that we ought to aim for that level of functionality :-)
>>
>> But, as always, we are so few (and those of us who know who to program
>> web-based applications even fewer) and so I really look forward to
>> seeing your code being released, and hope it can be integrated into
>> ccHost 5 :-)
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Dave
>>
>> I support www.gnuherds.org -
>> democratic free software jobs
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>>
>
> --
> Denis Moyogo Jacquerye --- http://home.sus.mcgill.ca/~moyogo
> Nkótá ya Kongó míbalé --- http://info-langues-congo.1sd.org/
> DejaVu fonts --- http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/
> Unicode (UTF-8)
>