Re: CSS fonts only?



Gail Carmichael wrote:

Hi Christopher (and others)!

Basically what I am saying is that the enumerations defined here <http://library.gnome.org/devel/pango/unstable/pango-Fonts.html>, like the variant, for example, have a specific subset of values. I just happened to notice that the defined values are pretty much equivalent to allowable CSS text attributes.

In Inkscape, we use the PangoFontDescription pretty extensively. It is how font information is stored in memory while the program is running, for example. The problem is that some fonts have, say, a swash variant, which cannot be described with CSS text attributes, and also cannot be described with any of these enumerations in Pango in terms of the PangoFontDescription. Instead, the regular face of a font family is used (as a default fall-back), and "fancy" fonts are thus not accessible in Inkscape.

Gail

My guess is the best way to handle this w Pango would be through OpenType
features & lookups i.e. to include the swash variant glyphs in the base font
and have those accessed through OpenType features and lookups - which could
be either contextual or user selected. Having *separate* alternative "fancy" fonts with swash / small caps / etc. fonts is the old way of doing things - if you think about it that way, is much more limited.

For user selected / discretionary OT features the application (Inkscape)
would need some kind of interface /menu through which the user could
apply the features she wanted to.

WRT CSS - there has been some serious discussion off and on over several years (on the OpenType list, CSS related lists and other places) about specifying - or applying OpenType features through CSS.

regards

- Chris

Hope that clarifies what I am trying to say. It would be cool to pretty much just add more values to the enumerations (and supporting code) so more varieties of fonts could be described. I wanted to know what you guys thought of that possibility - is there some technical or philosophical reason, as can sometimes happen, for not doing so?

Thanks
Gail

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