Re: [gtk-list] Gtk TrueType fontsupport?

[David Monniaux <monniaux clipper ens fr>]

On Sat, 6 Feb 1999, Mikael Hermansson wrote:

> Will Gtk support TrueType fonts in the near future?

TrueType fonts are an issue for the X-server (except when printing). Using
a TrueType-able X-server (such as the patched XFree86-3.3.3 available from
RedHat), you can use TrueType fonts just like any other font.

Something that remains unsatisfactory is the fact that you have to write
cumbersome fonts.dir files. I've just written a small "mkfontdirnew" tool
that behaves like mkfontdir, except that it writes information not only
for bitmap fonts, but also for PostScript Type 1 and TrueType fonts. This
package seems to work very well so far, except that it still does not set
some attributes right (encoding for both Type 1 and TrueType,
proportionnal/fixed-pitch for TrueType, oblique/italic are not
differentiated).

That way, I've just had to do mkfontdirnew /dos/windows/fonts, xset fp+
/dos/windows/fonts, and... voilą!

I intend to make this package available once I test it more. Also, I don't
even know how to write an autoconf script, neither an rpm, so...

This package also outputs Ghostscript Fontmap files. An interesting issue
for printing is the correspondance between X fonts and PostScript font
names. How is this solved in the current printing systems? Does the system
only support Times / Helvetica / Courier, or does it include some kind of
correspondence table? How to find .afm file? I think that loading the
table as some kind of resource into the X server (without modification to
the X server) would be the neatest solution.

Regards,
David