Re: Gnome text subsystems

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Wed, May 31, 2000 at 04:41:18PM -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
>    I think this design [Lauris] outlined is missing the "Font" that
> the user wants to use. 
> 
> [...]
>    What I would like to see is a mechanism in which we could "upload"
> a rasterized font that we generated from a Type1/TrueType font.

X can already do this with a font server.  The problem isn't getting
a raster, it's that X has a very limited idea of what a font is --
an idea that doesn't correspond to the fonts people buy today.

In writing a page layout program with a text formatter, I need
to be able to get at the complete font metrics, not just the
ones for rendered characters, and not just the metrics for
a specific size.  I need to get at the full glyph set of a font
(e.g. re-encoding a Type 1 font), and of course to find out what
that glyph set it.  I need to know which fonts "go together"
(for example, Adobe Caslon Italic and Adobe Caslon Export Italic)
and I may well want to use the outlines of glyphs (after
ligature substitution) as a path for drawing.

Yes, I want to do something fairly high-end, and no, there's no
code yet, I need to understand where people are going with
support for advanced typography first.

On the subject of fonts, I'm trying to arrange to get some good
quality text fonts donated either to X or to gnome.  I have had
a few offers already, although there is concern about copy
protection for commercial fonts.

Networked access to fonts causes major copyright and licensing
issues that need to be addressed.

Best,

Lee

-- 
Liam Quin - Barefoot in Toronto - liam@holoweb.net - http://www.holoweb.net/
Ankh on irc.sorcery.net http://valinor.sorcery.net/
Co-author, The XML Specification Guide, Wiley, 1999
Forthcoming (September?): The Open Source XML Database Toolkit