mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Norbert Nemec <address@hidden>]

Am Mittwoch, 22. Oktober 2003 15:23 schrieb Joris van der Hoeven:
> > Under Linux .ttf is becoming more and more common. Quite a number of
> > quality scalable fonts are distributed freely. (e.g. the Vera font
> > family, recently donated by Bitstream to te open source community)
>
> OK; so I got at least one .ttf font working. Does there exist a standard
> way in order to find the True Type fonts which are installed on the hard
> disk, together with their properties (bold, italic, etc.)?

Certainly nothing portable. Even under Linux, every distribution has their 
own 
system for managing fonts (e.g. defoma under Debian). Windows and MacOS 
certainly have something completely different.

Simplest suggestion: provide a configurable setting for the font-path. Any 
system usually just has a certain set of directories where ttfs are stored. 
Packagers may preconfigure that setting for their system. The user may add 
additional paths.

To determine the properties, you'll probably have to scan the files 
individually and sort them by families. (Freetype does provide everything for 
that.) A simple cache might speed this up. No idea whether that's worth the 
effort.

Leave the whole configuration system to a minimum, so anyone with more 
expertise may enhance it lateron. Don't try to invent any perfect solution 
for the font configuration problem. There have been too many people spending 
time on that already without coming up with a real solution...

Ciao,
Nobbi

-- 
______________________Norbert Nemec <address@hidden>

    Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
    Institut für Theoretische Physik III
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