I was looking at how to implement support for relative font weights
("bolder" and "lighter"). The spec says that a relative font weight
refers to the next lighter or bolder font. This means we cannot simply
subtract/add 100 to the weight but we have to find the next font
relative to the current font which is actually lighter or bolder. For
example if the current font weight is 400 for most of the default fonts
the next bolder font weight is 700. This means this feature actually
interacts with or is part of the font selection process.
This raises the question if the font selection algorithm needs to be
adjusted for this should it be fixed up to support for example list of
font family names, font variant and font stretch or even the font
selection strategy property including context characters, etc.. The
last bit (selection strategy, context characters, glyph availability)
may be a bit much for me to attempt at the moment but the other bits
look doable.
My question for the experienced developers and those fop-devs who look
at the overall project: Is this something useful and sensible to
attempt at this point in time, i.e. leading up to a 0.9 release? Would
this cut across or interfere with the attempt to integrate FOray's font
system into FOP?
Manuel
