Re: Thoughts on font management

[Isaiah Beerbower]

On 12/1/07, Isaiah Beerbower <public@ipaqah.com> wrote:
> On 11/30/07, Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de> wrote:
> > Isaiah Beerbower wrote:
> > > Hello all,
> > >
> > > A while back there was some discussion about the way GNUstep handles
> > > fonts. The two ways discussed were nfont bundles and fontconfig. I
> > > like nfonts because they give you more control over how your fonts are
> > > organized, but I also like the fontconfig method because it makes font
> > > installation easier for fonts which don't need to be organized beyond
> > > the computers knowhow. I would like to propose a new method  which
> > > gives both advantages.
> > >
> > > If we used a GNUstep maintained font index plist as our only cache and
> > > used fontconfig + FreeType for retrieving information from font files
> > > except when we come across an nfont (in which case we would read its
> > > plist) we would receive many advantages from both sides:
> > >
> > > * Those who want to distribute a font family in a pre-organized way
> > > can do so using an nfont.
> > >
> > > * Those who don't, won't have to do anything.
> > >
> > > * Those who want to keep their fonts organized a specific way can
> > > either put them all into nfonts, or change values in the font index.
> > >
> > > * Those who don't care aren't bothered.
> > >
> > > * GNUstep gets to choose which folders get indexed.
> > >
> > > We can also put other information in the index (if we want) such as
> > > wether an installed font is enabled or not.
> > >
> > > The index I am envisioning at this point would be a plist with an
> > > array of dictionaries, each dictionary holding the path to a font
> > > file, the file's last modification date, the font's family name,
> > > postscript name, style, whether it should use anti-aliasing or not,
> > > etc., etc..
> > >
> > > I would like this for cairo, but if it can be coded once then used in
> > > art also, that would be great to.
> > >
> > > I'm ready to implement such a thing if acceptable.
> > >
> >
> > Sounds like a nice idea to me, but I would prefer to see code, before I
> > judge on it :-)
>
> In that case I'll write some ...

I have an almost complete implementation working with the cairo back
end. Should I create a new branch for it under /libs/back/branches?
This is my first contribution to GNUstep, which is why I ask.

> > As I understand it, the nfont model provides more information per font
> > than we can get from FT and FC. How would your code try to substitute
> > values for that?
>
> I believe the problem with using fontconfig was that it doesn't cache
> the postscript name. The postscript name can be accessed with
> FreeType, but you have to cache it yourself.

Thanks,
Isaiah Beerbower

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