Re: [LIBART] type 1 fonts

[Lauris Kaplinski <lauris ximian com>]

Hello!

On 06 Feb 2001 12:47:44 +0000, Robin Becker wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is the right list to ask, but I'm sure someone will
> set me straight if not.

The right place for libgt1/gnome-font/... things should be gnome-print helixcode com

> I'm trying to make use of the type 1 library stuff in gnome-
> font/libgnomefont/gt1
> 
> 1) Trawling the sources I seem to find that this handles loading of
> fonts from pfb files with metric info from afm files. The standard Adobe
> stuff on my win32 box comes with pfm files. Is there any interest in
> being able to read the equivalent information from pfms?
> 
> 2) The gt1_load_font procedure seems to read the font and build up three
> different encoding vectors and then throws two of these away. Wouldn't
> it be better to split off the encoding builder into a separate routine.
> Also we seem to ignore the Symbol encoding which is very useful.

The gnome-font procedures are highly experimental and far from stable enough to use.
I have used these, to test several ideas, how to arrange font-handling for
gnome-print. Currently gnome-print has working copy of gnome-font functionality,
with the exception of FreeType stuff. So if you are interested in Type1 fonts,
I suggest better looking there.
For example, in gnome-print I dropped 8 bit encoding vectors completely - instead
we create unicode <-> glyph mapping, which includes currently Adobe symbols in
addition to latin, greek and cyrillic characters.

As of pfms, I do not know, whether reading these directly will make sense. Maybe
we could include pfm -> afm converter with gnome-print.

Btw. I have plan to replace libgt1 in gnome-print with FreeType2 eventually - the
main obstacle has been the unavailablility of FreeType2 installable version. That
is not problem any more, but at moment I do not want to do so big modification
before gnome-1.4 any more.
Also, unfortunately, FreeType2 functionality is not sufficent, so there have to remain
separate Type1 reading procedures, FT2 being mainly the rendering thing.

Best wishes,
Lauris Kaplinski