Re: Font system integration

[Alexander Malmberg]

Stefan Urbanek wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> GNUstep has great thing: The Text System.
> Another thing that i consider a big plus is very easy font
> management in back-art. It has several advantages:
> - users know where all fonts are stored - font paths are well
> defined for all systems
> - it is easy to add/remove fonts
> - ordinary users can add/remove fonts
> - old NeXT fonts can be reused
> - ...

Glad to hear that it's working well! :)

> Besides those pluses, there is a problem. Problem is with
> printing. Fonts presented in font panel are backend fonts, but
> they are also used in printed documents (when you print a text
> view, for example). If printed into a .ps file, all non-ghostscript
> standard fonts are undefined.
> Is there a way for integrating font displaying and font pringing?

Well, back-art could provide the raw font files to the printing context,
and both type 1 (ps) fonts and ttf fonts can be embedded in the
resulting .ps file. However, I'm not sure it should be done when
generating the .ps file. Depending on what the output is going to be
used for, you might want to only embed some fonts, or parts of a font,
or provide the fonts outside the .ps, so having an external tool handle
this might be better.

> I think that we will also need something like font manager, for
> exporting non-standard fonts into .ps files or dealing with font
> substitution. In back-art we usualy have a postrscript font, that
> should be included in the .ps file, but what about those back-x11
> fonts or ttf fonts from back-art?
>
> Stefan Urbanek

- Alexander Malmberg