[ft-devel] issue with ArialMT in 2.1.9

[Ian Brown]

In the latest release of our software, we have updated from ft 2.1.5 to
ft 2.1.9 (with the truetype hinting patch applied).
This is causing us problems with an Arial MT font (_A______.PFB) which
is apparently shipped with Acrobat reader 4 / 5. Apparently, many of our
customers are using that font :-(

The problem is that when freetype tries to render the space character,
it finds only one instruction which is 'closepath' and generates a
syntax error saying that there is no current path. Now, I can see that
it is doing the right thing - but the upshot of it is that I cannot get
the width of the space character and so our software breaks with this
font. Freetype versions prior to 2.1.9 (well, at least 2.1.5) ignored
this error - and so all our customers see is that the new version of our
software breaks on fonts that the old version could handle.

Is it possible for freetype to ignore this syntax error (i.e. no current
path) in the special case where closepath is the only instruction for a
glyph? Either that, or is there a way I can tell freetype to ignore
syntax errors like this when processing the font?

Ian

Ps: now that you have moved to savannah, will it be possible to make bug
reports in the tracker there? It would seem like a better place to
report such things than here.