Re: [Freetype] face->max_advance_width and the FreeType backend for XFree86

[David Turner]

Hi J.,

Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Unlike the Type 1 backend, the FreeType backend doesn't provide
> clients with an accurate average width.  What it does is to provide
> accurate average width for monospaced fonts (obviously), and just give
> half the maximum advance width for proportional fonts.
>
> While this heuristic works reasonably well with TrueType fonts, it
> gives rather bad results with Type 1 fonts.  As pointed out by James
> Cloos, the resulting value is varies widely between Type 1 and
> TrueType fonts.  Here are a few samples of the values provided by
> FreeType:
>
> TrueType fonts:
>
>   Monotype Times New Roman: 2.0 em
>   Monotype Arial: 2.0 em
>
> Type 1 fonts:
>
>   Monotype Times New Roman PSMT: 0.25 em
>   Monotype Arial PSMT: 0.278 em
>
> I'm wondering whether there's something wrong with FreeType, or
> whether I should use a different value to base my heuristic on.  Any
> suggestions welcome.

I think it was a bug in the Type 1 driver that was fixed in 2.1.0
Could you tell me if it still persists ??


Regards,

- David Turner
- The FreeType Project (www.freetype.org)