Re: [XForms] Font issues

[oleuthold]

Jens,
      thanks for your investigation. It looks like I have opened a can 
of worms ....

I have decided to use the following scheme in my application:

    check for "adobe-helvetica":
        if found, use it;
        otherwise check for "misc-fixed":
            if found use it;
            otherwise the display will show whatever font the system
                substitutes for "misc-fixed"; and
                check for file ".xforms/lxoskope0.85" in home directory:
                    if NOT found, show message GUI.

The message directs the user to the UserGuide, where the font options 
are explained.
The user can turn off the message permanently. The file in the .xforms 
directory might
contain user preferences information in the future. And of course other 
XForms applications
can have their own preference file in this directory.
Regards
         Oskar


On 06/02/2014 09:00 AM, address@hidden wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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>     1. XForms and TrueType fonts (Jens Thoms Toerring)
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>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2014 21:46:16 +0200
> From: Jens Thoms Toerring <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: [XForms] XForms and TrueType fonts
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Hi,
>
>      I've done a bit of reading and experimenting on how
> TrueType etc. fonts can be used with X11. As far as I can
> see, with a bit of work they also could be used for XForms
> via the Xft extension. As far as I understand it fonts
> would be requested from fontconfig and rendered via the
> X Render extension and the FreeType library. This would
> support the use not only of TrueType fonts but also of
> several other font types, including the old bitmap fonts.
>
> This would also allow to install some XForms default
> fonts since the new system uses client-side fonts, i.e.,
> they get rendered on the machine where the program is
> running, so the potential issue with fonts missing on
> the machine the programs interface is shown on doesn't
> exist (though probably at a certain cost since the in-
> formation has to be transmitted over the network to the
> machine running the X server).
>
> If we switch to this some new linraries will be needed, at
> least libXft, libfontconfig, libfreetype and libXRender.
> This would remove backward conpatibility of XForms for
> older systems from times before the new font syatem was
> introduced. The obvious question is if anyone is still
> using one of these old systems? "Old systems" are probably
> at least 10 years old when it comes to most Linux distros,
> other Unix variants may have made the switch later (or not
> at all?).
>
> Of course, it would be possible the make the switch to the
> new font handling system a configuration option. But this
> probably would require a lot of extra work, both now and
> in the future (since we'd need two "branches" of the source
> code, each of which would have to be modified and tested
> when bugs are fixed or new features added. Thus I would
> rather like to avoid that if no-one's using old systems
> lacking the new features. So please let me know if you're
> on such a system!
>
> Please note that this is still in the planning stage, it
> could very well happen that I realize that there are some
> insurmountable problems.
>
>                        Best regards, Jens