[Setup-tool-hackers] Request For Enhancement: Font configuration,installation and unification tool

[thaynes ca ibm com]

This is definitely intended as a discussion piece, but it is something I
feel is needed by the 95% of users who aren't ever going to plunge their
hands into editing their configuration files by hand.

Something I see a lot of people having a lot of problems with on their
systems is font management. Because there are so many interdependant
systems using the fonts on a Linux system, all tied up in various ways,
most people have no clue how to configure all the various parts. An easy
to use tool to keep all the font configuration consistent would be a
great help. As the Ximian setup tools seem to have the (maybe unstated)
goal of being able to replace all the current mess of configuration
tools seen distro by distro and platform by platform, this is another
important area to cover.

As far as I can tell, font management would have to cover at least the
following

Xserver configuration:
     XFree86 - i.e. the X server does the rendering fonts specified
                by directory name in FontPath lists in the
                /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 files.
     XftConfig - Keith Packard's new RENDER interface fonts specified
                by directory name in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XftConfig and
                usually suplemented by ~/.XftConfig files
     XFS based systems where font rendering is done by an external
          utility to the Xserver fonts specified by directory name
          in /etc/X11/fs/config

Each font directory is setup according to several other files -
fonts.dir, fonts.alias. The contents of these files are usually written
using tools like ttmkfdir (truetype fonts) and type1inst (adobe type1
fonts) mkfontdir (bitmaps).

Updating these files and fontpaths (including adding and removing
fontpaths) can be done without needing to reset the X server - an 'xset
fp rehash' will make any changes needed on the fly, prefaced by 'xset
fp+ dirname' and 'xset fp- dirname' to alter path configuration.

Then there is the issue of printing - ghostscript can render both type 1
and truetype fonts, so the GS_FONTPATH must be set to include all
directories with these font types. Making the displayed fonts on the
screen match up to the printed output is going to be important for the
average user.

Then you get into TeX metafonts, which can be converted with some
jiggery-pokery into type 1 fonts and made available to the X server/
ghostscript.

Then it gets messier - commercial packages who use their own
fonts. Ideally a configuration tool would move these fonts into the
mainstream X/Ghostscript configuration and just leave symbolic links so
that the commercial packages don't notice the change. I'm sure there are
other potential problems.

Having a tool to make installing new fonts, examine currently available
fonts and display them and generally unify all the current font
configuration files would be an great help.

Anyway, this has been written to provoke comment. Feel free to let rip!

Cheers,

Toby Haynes
tel: (416) 448-4330
email: thaynes@ca.ibm.com


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