Re: [ft-devel] Understanding Type1 fonts

[Donn]

Hi,
 Sorry, my Internet connection died suddenly yesterday and I've been offline 
until moments ago.

On Wednesday, 09 January 2008 17:59:01 address@hidden wrote:
> Sorry, yet I've never used Fonty Python, Inkscape, Scribus etc.
Wow, FP I can understand :), but Inkscape! You should give it a go!

> Please let me know the expected applications that Fonty Python
> manages the fonts for, and whether they (will) use fontconfig
> /or not. I guess fontconfig is the reason why you choose ~/.fonts,
> but I'm not sure.
Fontconfig, yes, I am no expert on these subjects. It's enough for me that 
fontconfig does magical stuff and I can rely on the ~/.fonts directory to 
provide fonts to other applications. I once came very close to grokking how 
it worked, but I have a very efficient forgettery :)

I can't list all the apps, and that's the point really - I simply wanted a way 
to manage fonts - have them come and go. I found, by chance, that soft links 
to font files placed in ~/.fonts would do the trick and Fonty was born. 
(Well, it took me almost a year to find out that PIL could render bitmaps of 
fonts from a given file, but that's another story.)

So, rather than having thousands of fonts (and anyone with a package manager 
and too much time will tell you how easy it is to overdose...) installed in 
the system, with FP one can deal in small 'herds' of fonts. I really hate the 
mile-long-mouse-pad syndrome when one has to scroll through fonts in a 
chooser (pick any app) to find one you want. 

>... kerning ...
Thanks for the info about kerning. I am afraid it went directly over my 
head :) I'm a simple sort. I have gathered from your fine posts and the 
others in the thread that I must keep the 'metric' files in the same folder 
as the 'glyph' files - to that end:
Given a PFA or PFB file, I will search for an AFM (of the same name) and then 
fallback to a PFM and then fallback to Nothing. So, when there is a related 
file, it will be linked along with the font file (pfa/pfb) into ~/.fonts

> Do you have any favorite software supporting AFM/PFM
> or TrueType kerning?
To tell the truth, Type1 is a total mystery to me. I am in the dark on all 
sides. I have never used anything other than TTF files. I hang my head in 
shame ;)

\d

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