Re: [Devel] Re: Another approach to mac fonts...

[Dan Williams]

George,

Except that, even though resource forks don't exist on other platforms, 
.dfont files have the resource fork embedded in the data fork.  
Therefore, if you copied over a .dfont file to a PC, you would be able 
to walk the resource fork with your code and an fopen() and extract the 
necessary 'sfnt' resources.  This would apply to other platforms as 
well.  So even though other platforms don't have the concept of 
resource forks, Apple is doing us a favor by moving it into the data 
fork.

For example:  if you take the hex data of a .dfont file's data fork, 
and paste that hex data into the resource fork of a file with, say, 
HexEdit, you can then open up the file in ResEdit and do magic.

So there's the utility of your code.  Not the <filename>/rsrc part, but 
walking the resource fork's (the resource-fork-in-data-fork) structure 
without Toolbox calls, and getting the data.  THAT is the cool part.

Dan

On Monday, May 19, 2003, at 11:46  AM, George Williams wrote:

> On 2003.05.19 08:26 Dan Williams wrote:
> > Ok, correct you are.  My first read of your comment was more general, 
> > hence my response.  However, I believe my comment here still stands:  
> > why should we not make this code available to other platforms?
> Because resource forks don't exist on other platforms.
> And the notation "<filename>/rsrc" only works on OS/X (ie. not on 
> OS/9, etc.)
> The code which is enabled will handle the concepts which do exist on 
> other platforms (dfonts, macbinaried resource files, etc).
>
> > I think it would be a huge benefit.  Furthermore, why shouldn't we 
> > simply compile ftmac.c for _all_ platforms, include your code here
> > for walking the "resource" fork for non-mac platforms, otherwise 
> > compile with the code that's already in ftmac.c?
> If you want to move my code to ftmac that makes sense.
> I use a slightly more general approach than ftmac (I have modified 
> FT_Open_Face and will pick up resource files that have been loaded 
> into memory, whereas ftmac modifies FT_New_Face and only works on disk 
> files), so the two don't mesh as well as they might.
>
> I'm going to be biking through the Loire valley for the next couple of 
> weeks and won't be making any changes to anything.
>
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