OSDL DTL Tech Board: Fonts & Linux (Thu, Aug 31)

[James Richard Tyrer]

Keith Packard wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 22:18 -0700, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> 
>> In the GNOME font chooser dialog all 16 of the fonts I listed with the
>> family name "Helvetica" are listed under "Helvetica" the "Family"
>> window.  So, there are 16 selections available in the: "Style" window
>> and they are NOT sorted into any logical order:
> 
>         Condensed Light
>         Light
>         Condensed Light Oblique
>         Light Oblique
>         Condensed Medium
>         Regular
>         Narrow
>         Condensed Oblique
>         Oblique
>         Narrow Oblique
>         Condensed Bold
>         Bold
>         Condensed Bold Oblique
>         Narrow Bold Oblique
>         Bold Oblique
> 
> Fortunately, fontconfig provides enough information to sort these
> sensibly; it breaks out weight/slant information into separate fields
> and also provides (as of today) a way to detect "decorative" faces
> (shadowed, outlined, etc). What has been fixed is the insistance that
> fonts only have two kind of variation (bold/regular, italic/roman), what
> remains to be done is to present the available information sensibly. Ask
> me for the information you need, but don't ask me how to present it to
> the user...
> 
As I stated earlier in the thread.  FontConfig has it right -- provides
this information.  Which makes me wonder even more why the application
level stuff doesn't get it right.

It isn't 100% yet, I did find one error:

For Helvetica (Type1), the" "fonts.cache-1" file lists:

"hvc_____.pfb" 0 "Helvetica:style=Condensed \
Medium:slant=0:weight=100:width=75:
"hvn_____.pfb" 0 "Helvetica:style=Narrow:slant=0:weight=100:width=100:
"hv______.pfb" 0 "Helvetica:style=Regular:slant=0:weight=100:width=100:

so I appear to have found one minor error.  I'm not certain what the
width for Helvetica Narrow should be but it would obviously be between
75 and 100.

Do you think that FontConfig should address the problem with TrueType
fonts where with Type1 the family name for Helvetica Narrow is:
	
	Helvetica

but with Type1 it is:

	Helvetica Narrow

Yes MicroSoft is responsible for the fact that TrueType names are
broken, but we really need them to match in *NIX.  I find that many apps
are built for the TrueType model :-( so I don't really know which way it
would be better to convert.  Perhaps the cache file could do it both ways.

Also note: "style=Condensed Medium" above.  Some of the AFM files have
errors in them -- this one for example.  It should really be:
"style=Condensed" but the fault lies in the AFM file.   Should
FontConfig attempt to fix this?

Note I like your product (keep up the good work!), but I am a retired
engineer and am advising you of the minor issues I found to try to help.
  That is what engineers are taught to do, find the fault in stuff.
That is the first step in improving something.

-- 
JRT