I would like to propose extensions to font search paths used by AW.
Currently, AW searches opens fonts.dir in each directory in font path and
registers all fonts in that directory. I propose to slightly extend AW's
behaviour: after reading fonts in the given directory, AW should try to open
fonts.dir in subdirectory of that directory, named after current encoding
name. E.g. if name of current encoding is CP1251 and /AbiSuite/fonts is in
AW's font search path, AW will (as it always did) open
/AbiSuite/fonts/fonts.dir, and after that (as I propose) it should try to
open /AbiSuite/fonts/CP1251/fonts.dir.
The proposed approach has the following advantages:
1) No extra fonts need to be shipped with AW. Extra fonts for other encodings
are distributed separately, and have to be extracted under fonts/ (thus
creating subdirectories in it).
2) There is no need to edit fonts.dir (either by hand or automatically),
there is no need to invent unique font file names (most localized Type1 font
files I've seen have the same names as their non-localized font files),
there is no need for user to add directory with fonts for his locale to
font path list.
3) This extension doesn't break anything.
What do you think about this? If you accept it, I will include support for
this in my patch.
Best regards,
-Vlad
