Yes, the afm files are very, very necessary. They provide the font metrics
which are used for the purpose of text layout. Printing would be
impossible without those metrics.
I should describe our restriction to Type1 fonts as being a "current"
restriction. There is no reason why AbiWord could not be extended to
support TrueType, for example. We have no immediate plans to do so, but it
could be done.
--
> Ok. I can see that. My question is, are the afm files _really_
>necessary? I would really like to be able to just direct abiword to my
>/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/Type1 directory instead of downloading 1.7 meg
>file.
> Another thing are true type fonts. I can easily display them in any X
>application using a font server (xfsft) and I would really like to be able
>to use them in abiword (yes, I do have a coresponding fonts.dir file).
>True type fonts can be embedded into postscript just as well as type1
>fonts (as type42 font or something like that) all that is missing are
>those blasted afm files. So once again, are they really necessary?
>
>-Filip
>
>
>On Thu, 8 Apr 1999 Shaw Terwilliger wrote:
>
>> If this isn't in the fonts information on the web site, it really should
>> be. We can't use X for all font information because X sucks--it doesn't
>> leak enough information so that we can create printable documents.
>> We can't get the raw Type1 fonts to embed in PostScript output through
>> X, we can only get character metrics and pre-rendered bitmaps. To
>> get the Type1 information, we need a copy of the fonts locally.
>> GhostScript uses fonts this way, mapped through its Fontmap. X loads
>> fonts through fonts.dir, and so people (and us, programmatically)
>> don't have to maintain two seperate font lists, we parse the same fonts.dir
>> to find our Type1 fonts.
>>
>> X has no concept of "printing"--it's just a window display system,
>> and even scalable Type1 fonts are a relatively new thing to X
>> (as of X11R5). Before that you had fixed resolution bitmap
>> fonts which would be unreadable at 10 pixels high on a 600 DPI laser
>> printer, but horribly aliased at 600 pixels high.
>>
>> We use Type1 fonts because they're portable (ASCII and binary formats
>> easily converted using free tools), scalable (not resolution-dependent
>> bitmaps), and there is a set of printables with GhostScript that
>> look very nice on paper. They could use a few more hints for display,
>> though, but zooming in on a document will give them a bit more space
>> to smooth out.
Eric W. Sink, Software Craftsman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
