Jeremias et al,
In connection with our recent discussions concerning font handling, I
looked at the contentious fontconfig system driven by Keith Packard.
The user documentation at
http://pdx.freedesktop.org/~fontconfig/fontconfig-user.html includes:
<quote>
Font Properties
While font patterns may contain essentially any properties, there are
some well known properties with associated types. Fontconfig uses some
of these properties for font matching and font completion. Others are
provided as a convenience for the applications rendering mechanism.
Property Type Description
--------------------------------------------------------------
family String Font family name
style String Font style. Overrides weight and slant
slant Int Italic, oblique or roman
weight Int Light, medium, demibold, bold or black
size Double Point size
aspect Double Stretches glyphs horizontally before hinting
pixelsize Double Pixel size
spacing Int Proportional, monospace or charcell
foundry String Font foundry name
antialias Bool Whether glyphs can be antialiased
hinting Bool Whether the rasterizer should use hinting
verticallayout Bool Use vertical layout
autohint Bool Use autohinter instead of normal hinter
globaladvance Bool Use font global advance data
file String The filename holding the font
index Int The index of the font within the file
ftface FT_Face Use the specified FreeType face object
rasterizer String Which rasterizer is in use
outline Bool Whether the glyphs are outlines
scalable Bool Whether glyphs can be scaled
scale Double Scale factor for point->pixel conversions
dpi Double Target dots per inch
rgba Int unknown, rgb, bgr, vrgb, vbgr,
none - subpixel geometry
minspace Bool Eliminate leading from line spacing
charset CharSet Unicode chars encoded by the font
lang String List of RFC-3066-style languages this
font supports
</quote>
I have also, as I noted previously, looked briefly at the way fonts are
defined in Java. Would I be correct in surmising that the current
manner of defining fonts is derived from Adobe's methods for PDF and PS?
If that is the case (a big if) might we not be better to move to a more
generic form, with translation into each particular form of font
specification?
Peter
--
Peter B. West <http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/resume.html>
