[Devel] font format corner cases

[James H. Cloos Jr.]

The type42 support got me thinking about other font format corner
cases and ft2 support for them.

The first examples that come to mind are gzip(1)ed and compress(1)ed
font files, such as the gzip(1)ed pcf files found in most xfree86
installs -- have the commercial X distributors all moved from
compress(1) yet? -- as well as bdf files.  

Another interesting case is mac fonts on non-mac systems, in eg
macbinary or AppleDouble formats.

The third catagory would be fonts in eg jar files.

For some of these cases, it seems more likely that the ft2 consumer
should be responsible for grabbing out the font file.  An uncompressed
file in a jar can be mmap(2)ed and passed to ft2 that way.  

For other formats, such as mac fonts, perhaps it would be better for
ft2 to provide transparent access, given that the support for mac font
files on macs should be readily re-usable.

But what about compressed files?  Looking closer than I had when
starting this note¹, I presume the support for streams is for stuff
like this?  Or am I misreading that.

Are there any other interesting a/o useful cases?

Two things I'd like to hack on are adding support for gzip(1)ed pcf
and bdf files to ftview and friends, and supporting MacBinary, Apple-
Single and AppleDouble mac font files on non-mac systems.  How exactly
shoud such support be added?

-JimC

¹ :)