Re: Encoding problem with Azerbaijani translations of ISO-3166names

[Danilo Segan <danilo gnome org>]

Hi Keith,

Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com> writes:

> Around 21 o'clock on Feb 5, Dafydd Harries wrote:
>
>> The modified fonts have been renamed in order to comply with Vera's
>> license.
>
> Do note that Gnome can actually get new glyphs into the fonts and retain 
> the Vera name. If you've just combined existing glyphs and retained the 
> existing hinting, I think it will be easy enough to do that.

While you're listening :), I wonder if it's possible to do something
like the following using fontconfig.

A couple of Serbian cyrillic glyphs have different basic look than
Russian cyrillic glyphs, so I'd like to create separate fonts
containing those 5 glyphs which differ, and make them override the
glyphs in original font.  I have so far thought that this is not
possible because fontconfig makes font selection based on complete
glyphs repertoire and language data, but now you seem to imply that
this is possible.

I don't need detailed instructions, I'll dig into it once I find some
time -- still, it helps a lot when one has a definite yes or no. :)

>
> Adding glyphs for non latin languages might not be desirable; existing 
> applications are dealing with multiple fonts pretty well these days.
>

Yes, but there are no good looking cyrillic fonts for desktop, which
are free (as in freedom) at the same time.  My additions to Vera Sans
is the best I have gotten so far (I did try FreeFonts Sans, URW-Cyr
Nimbus Sans families, ...), and with Freetype's autohinting (bytecode
interpreter off) they look even better than Monotype's (Microsoft's)
fonts (personal opinion, of course).  The best fonts I have ever
gotten my hands on, when it comes to rendering Cyrillic on screen, is
Bitstream Zurich (alas, it's not free).

Also Cyrillic is pretty similar to Latin (there are probably around
ten uppercase and ten lowercase glyphs which look the same), and
general style can easily be translated from one to the other.  Greek
also has a lot of similarities with both Latin and Cyrillic, but it
is mostly visible in form of uppercase glyphs (eg. cyrillic P can
probably be used for Greek Pi).

Cheers,
Danilo