Thanks for the responses, everyone. I just got into a busy spell at
school again, but later on I will need to look into this more. It
sounds to me that, basically, we shouldn't be using that
PangoFontDescription structure in memory to represent our fonts? Unless
that changes (either the options the structure can represent or the
fact that Inkscape relies on it so much), we will be stuck with the
fonts it can represent. I will probably be back more a bit later to
ask questions :)
Gail
Christopher Fynn wrote:
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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