Re: urg.

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

address@hidden writes:
> > I'm certain we can produce the PDF backend. It's just that I thought
> > it would be a convenient way to deal with TTF fonts.
> 
> Why do you think that TTFs are easier to handle than the OTFs we
> already have?  Both flavours use the SFNT wrapper format; the
> differences are one level below.  It should be straightforward to put
> the OTFs into a PDF document.  The very problem is subsetting of the
> fonts to get smaller documents, something which is beyond lilypond
> IMHO.
> > Oh, of course I forgot another option: we can construct a Type42
> > font ourselves.
> 
> I discourage that.  You loose flexibility.  OTFs are much more
> compact.

Notwithstanding your advice, I went ahead, and put a PD ttf->t42
utility into lilypond as a library. It only took me a an hour or
two. Granted, a one-line fragment with japanese lyrics creates a 16 mb
PS file, but it is a 16 mb file which renders correctly.

If we want to go towards real PS/PDF generation, I guess it would be
better to hook up with libgnomeprint, which has the added benefit of
outsourcing all code maintenance to the GNOME hackers.

-- 

 Han-Wen Nienhuys   |   address@hidden   |   http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen