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Re: [Freefont-bugs] a comparison of FreeMono.ttf versions of 2003-06-24
From: |
Steve White |
Subject: |
Re: [Freefont-bugs] a comparison of FreeMono.ttf versions of 2003-06-24 and 2008-03-24 |
Date: |
Mon, 7 Apr 2008 01:28:44 +0200 |
Joe,
On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 1:08 AM, Joe Wells <address@hidden> wrote:
> "Steve White" <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> > As I said, you have an application that doesn't work with the changes
> > in question.
> > That's enough for me.
>
> Viewing things on a screen is just an "application"? Are you saying
> you are only concerned with printing on paper? Sorry, but I am
> confused.
>
Viewing things in an xterm is an application. In terms of users, very
few users do this. Mostly they use GUI applicatons. It's true, have
a look around.
Line-drawing in an xterm is a quite specific application.
I am working toward making FreeMono better suited for xterm applications.
> Is it possible to get a version of the font that lies about its height
> for use by people who don't mind tall glyphs getting truncated? Or is
> there some way to lie after the .ttf file is created?
>
Near as I can tell, xterm checks the max and min points of the glyphs
in the font.
It doesn't seem to use the OS/2 height parameters, as most other
applications do (in different ways, unfortunately.)
There is a misty memory of an xterm parameter called "minspace". Near
as I can tell, it would be used like this:
xterm -fa monospace-11:minspace=true
But I have tried it, and I have never seen it work.
And, to repeat the obvious: FreeFont is...free. You can edit to your liking.
> >> > 2) Combining accents don't work as you expect
> >>
> >> Not only do combining accents not work as I expect, they are currently
> >> completely broken and do not work as anyone should expect. Or at
> >> least they are completely broken in xterm. Since all other fonts that
> >> support combining accents that I can test right now work with xterm
> >> (e.g., DejaVu Sans Mono, Lucida Sans Typewriter, CMU Typewriter Text),
> >
> > I just tried this.
> >
> > In my xterms, on my Ubuntu gutsy system, DejaVu Sans Mono also doesn't
> > work on your combining diacriticals test. I opened it up with
> > FontForge. It works the same way FreeFont does.
>
> This is interesting!
>
> I just tested again with DejaVu Sans Mono. Here is the screenshot:
>
>
> You can see that Λ̊, v̇, and r̈ are handled correctly, while a⃑ and b⃑ are
> not (presumably because the combining character ⃑ is missing from the
> font).
>
> I ran xterm under strace and verified that it only accessed these two
> font files:
>
> open("/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf", O_RDONLY) =
> 6
> open("/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf",
> O_RDONLY) = 6
>
> (Although this may have changed in recent xterm versions, I know that
> in my (older) xterm version that it is not capable of mixing fonts
> together, so there is anyway no possibility of it getting supporting
> characters from other fonts.)
>
> On my system (Ubuntu Dapper Drake), the above-mentioned .ttf files are
> from DejaVu version 2.5
>
That is indeed interesting. I'll have to get the newer DejaVu, and
see what they're doing.
I have the dejavu 2.19 packages... Hey...my system is Gutsy. How
come you have newer DejaVu?
> So maybe more recent versions of DejaVu have the same problem.
>
> I seem to remember having precisely this discussion with the xterm
> maintainer a couple of years ago. I do not precisely remember the
> resolution of the issue. I seem to remember that he agreed that xterm
> should not consider the presence of 0-width characters to spoil
> whether a font is fixed-width.
>
It seems reasonable to me. But I'm sure some people have not
considered this point when writing their apps.
It will be a judment call in the end...if I can get away with 0-width
glyphs in enough of the apps I consider important, I'll implement the
combining diacriticals. But it will take some time to test.
> >> • Document a way (if there is one) that users can tell applications to
> >> use this font with a smaller vertical line spacing.
> >>
> > If you look at the bug pages, you will see that I document like crazy.
> > I'm also working on an overhaul of the main pages. It will all be
> > there.
>
> Are you saying you in fact know of a way that users can tell
> applications to use this font with smaller vertical line spacing?
>
I know ways in many applications.
In CSS-savvy web browsers, you can set the line height to 1, which
makes them pay attention just to the height parameters in the font.
In word processors, there is always a line height adjustment.
In xterm, as I have said, I don't have a solution. But as I have
said, I'm doing what I can to fix the font. It will take time.
I'm also working on docs, but that also takes time.
> On my system, URW Nimbus Mono comes in the gsfonts package and it is
> available under the name "Nimbus Mono L". For your amusement, here is
> the truly awe-inspiringly awful screenshot of the test with this font:
>
> Unfortunately, as you can see, Nimbus Mono L has quite bad problems
> with using too much vertical space, and has a quite small character
> repertoire.
>
Sorry about the vertical space. I had assumed the scarcity of
characters would deliver narrow line spacing, but I was wrong. Beats
me.
> >> I have the same issue in text editors: the number of lines that
> >> can be displayed is crucial.
> >
> > That is an interesting viewpoint, and I take it seriously.
> > But once again, compactness isn't the main goal of this project.
>
> Well, I will continue to seek a font with decent Unicode coverage
> (including the Greek alphabet, math symbols, superscripts, subscripts,
> and combining accents) that displays nicely in a terminal window.
>
Stay tuned!
- [Freefont-bugs] a comparison of FreeMono.ttf versions of 2003-06-24 and 2008-03-24, Joe Wells, 2008/04/03
- Re: [Freefont-bugs] a comparison of FreeMono.ttf versions of 2003-06-24 and 2008-03-24, James Cloos, 2008/04/08
- [Freefont-bugs] Re: a comparison of FreeMono.ttf versions of 2003-06-24 and 2008-03-24, Joe Wells, 2008/04/08
- Re: [Freefont-bugs] Re: a comparison of FreeMono.ttf versions of 2003-06-24 and 2008-03-24, James Cloos, 2008/04/10
- Re: [Freefont-bugs] a comparison of FreeMono.ttf versions of 2003-06-24 and 2008-03-24, Steve White, 2008/04/09
- Re: [Freefont-bugs] a comparison of FreeMono.ttf versions of 2003-06-24 and 2008-03-24, James Cloos, 2008/04/09
Re: [Freefont-bugs] a comparison of FreeMono.ttf versions of 2003-06-24 and 2008-03-24, Steve White, 2008/04/05