gnome-print 0.32 is out the door !

[Chema Celorio <chema ximian com>]

Gnome-print 0.32 has been released. 

This is a "HANDLE WITH CARE" release.

Packagers : Please don't package this version of gnome-print just yet as
it contains some new Estonian crazy code with very little user testing,
0.33 will come out soon. This version of gnome-print IS compatible with
previews versions of gnome-print, you should not neet to recompile your
apps.

Short version :
---------------
- After going crazy because of the font installation problems we
  decided to implement a sligtly different system for
  gnome-font-install. We hope to fix the gnome-font-install
  problems once and for all. See below for more info.

- This release contains for the first time True Type font support.
  For more info, see below.

Who should test this release :
1. Those who are or have had problems with gnome-font-install. Which
   usually manifest as gnumeric not running because of missing fonts
   or gedit not beeing able to print.

   ---> **Please** let us know your success/failure stories at
   gnome-print ximian com with the new gnome-font-install method.

2. Those who like to be on the bleeding edge and would like to test
   the first stab at True Type fonts. Read the True Type font section
   below before sending a bug report or asking for help.

3. People who need non-western fonts that would like to test bleeding
   edge code and can handle a bleading edge results.

You can get it from :
ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/gnome-print
(once the mirror sync)

regards,
Lauris Kaplinsky
Chema Celorio

================
Longer version :

What is new ?
-------------

- Internal font handling has been ported to FreeType. As a result
  everything is just cleaner, faster and more stable (or at least we
  hope so). TrueType fonts work everywhere (except PDF driver at
  moment), including TrueType collection and large unicode/eastern fonts
  (actually only the ones having unicode mapping, but almost all have).
  PostScript driver can do glyph subse1tting, so print jobs in CJK do
  not grow insanely long. (Akira and me)

- As you can guess, font installer searches and analyses now TrueTypes 
  too. It has now semi-magical '--smart' option, that does some
  automatic hard-disc scanning (not '/' still - for that you have to 
  tell it explicitly) and should build fontmaps out of nothing for
  everyone. (me)

- DisplayFonts (read gnumeric fonts) use more robust (no crashes) and
  a bit more pedantic (you now get 'fixed' instead of 'helvetica' for
  missing ones) font lookup algorithms. But 8-bit locales still fall 
  back, if strict locale match fails - it is meant to help those, who 
  want to use iso-8859-15 locale, but have only iso-8859-1 fonts.

- bugfixes here and there (you, me, everyone)


The new installer
-----------------

We where about to go crazy because of the problems with the old
installer. We added for this release --smart flag to the font installer
that will run the installer and seach for fonts in usual font locations.
If gnome-print-installer does not find some fonts, most likely it means
that we have not added the path to the --smart option.
gnome-font-install --smart is ran in "make install" it does not requires
the user to run it manually. 

This is still an experiment but we have high hopes that it takes all the
font problems away. The current list of directories that it searches for
fonts is :
 
        /* generic */
        "/usr/share/fonts",
        "/usr/local/share/fonts",
	DATADIR "/fonts",
        /* Ghostscript */
        "/usr/share/ghostscript/fonts",
        "/usr/lib/ghostscript/fonts",
        "/usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts",
        "/usr/local/lib/ghostscript/fonts",
        "/usr/freeware/share/ghostscript/fonts",
	DATADIR "/ghostscript/fonts",
	LIBDIR "/ghostscript/fonts",
        /* Debian */
        "/usr/lib/texmf/fonts/type1/adobe",
        "/usr/lib/texmf/fonts/type1/omega",
        "/usr/lib/texmf/fonts/afm",
        "/usr/share/texmf/fonts/type1/adobe",
        "/usr/share/texmf/fonts/type1/omega",
        "/usr/share/texmf/fonts/afm",
        "/usr/share/a2ps",
        /* Groff */
        "/usr/share/groff/font",
        "/usr/lib/groff/font",
	DATADIR "/groff/font",
	LIBDIR "/groff/font",
        /* X */
        "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts"
	/* Misc */

We have the feeling that we are missing some standard paths for some
other platforms (AIX & SGI come to mind), send more standard font paths
to gnome-print ximian com so that we can add them to the installer. The
gnome-print installation should work after "make install" in all
platforms without having to do any special magic.

This is still experimental and we don't know if it will create more
problems than it will solve. Lets see how it goes and please report to
the mailing list success/failure stories.

True Type Fonts
---------------

This is the first release of gnome-print that includes True Type font
support. This means that (with a little bit of magic) you are going to
be able to use True Type fonts in gnumeric and print with them. This
beeing the first implementation you are going to have to install the
fonts in X manually and hope that the fonts that gnumeric asks for match
the ones installed in the X server ;-). Cross your fingers tight !

If the fonts where not found by gnome-print-install during the make
install process, you will need to run gnome-font-install to add this
fonts. You can use gnumeric to test if the new fonts are there, if you
don't get the fonts on the screen but you can see them on the print
preview window it means that either the fonts are not installed on the X
server or that gnome-print is not beeing able to match the fonts for
printing with the screen fonts.