Re: ghostscript 9.56.1 in lilypond 2.23.14 no longer finds font Helvetica-Bold, but gs in 2.22.1 did

[Jeff Olson]

On 11/12/2022 1:51 AM, Hans Åberg wrote:

> > On 12 Nov 2022, at 05:27, Jeff Olson <jjocanoe@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 11/7/2022 6:58 AM, Hans Åberg wrote:
> > > > In 2.22 you successfully get "Hello, World!" at top of page.
> > > >
> > > >           
> > > This example works in LilyPond 2.23.80 (MacPorts), on MacOS 13.0.
> > >         
> > Interesting.  This must mean that Helvetica-Bold is available as a system font on MacOS, so even our stripped down ghostscript can find it there.  Not so on my Windows 10.
> >       
> Indeed, there is a TrueType Collection Helvetica.ttc, that also contains the bold font.
>
> This link say you can download it.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica
>

Thanks, Hans,

That info was for a Helvetica derivative called "Neue Haas Grotesk", and the mentioned package, "Pan-European Supplemental Fonts", is no longer available for Windows 10.

But even buying real Helvetica properly might not work because the ghostscript in 2.23.14 fails to find find fonts that already *are* system fonts on my Windows 10, namely "Times New Roman", which is present in various faces via these Windows font files:

$ ls /c/Windows/Fonts/times*
/c/Windows/Fonts/times.ttf  /c/Windows/Fonts/timesbd.ttf  /c/Windows/Fonts/timesbi.ttf  /c/Windows/Fonts/timesi.ttf

But my MWE continues to fail with all these attempts to reference the old "/Times" and "/Times-Bold" that used to work in 2.22.1's ghostscript:

\markup { \postscript #"
    %/Times findfont
    %/Times-Bold findfont
    %/TimesNewRoman findfont
    %/Times-New-Roman findfont
    %/Times-Regular findfont
    %/Times-Roman findfont
    %/TimesNewRoman-Regular findfont
    /TimesNewRoman-Bold findfont
    4 scalefont setfont
    (ABCDEFG#b) show "}

---

So, Jean,

The 2.23 ghostscript appears to find system fonts on MacOS (/Helvetica) but not on Windows (/Times).  Is that the kind of failure that Jonas was referring to in the developer thread?

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2022-04/msg00018.html
If system fonts don't work anymore via LilyPond, that would be worth of
a bug report.

I've done #(ly:font-config-display-fonts) as directed in the 2.23 NR (thanks for adding that), and it lists

family Times New Roman
 Times New Roman:style=Bold,Negreta, ...

But the MWE above with all those variations still fails even after trying all of these overrides

%\markup \override #'(font-name . "Times") "ABCDEFG#b"
%\markup \override #'(font-name . "Times Bold") "ABCDEFG#b"
%\markup \override #'(font-name . "Times New Roman") "ABCDEFG#b"
\markup \override #'(font-name . "Times New Roman Bold") "ABCDEFG#b"

This isn't blocking me since you showed me the workaround using "C059".  I only raise this issue in case the stripped down ghostscript isn't working with system fonts the way Jonas and the developers intended.

If this is just a matter of finding the right way to name the font within \postscript, then perhaps some warning should be added to the 2.23 changes about this issue.

Jeff