On 13.12.2005 21:22:12 Vincent Hennebert wrote: > This is perhaps more just for the record. > > FOrayFont needs a font-config file to run properly; the most basic file > will only contain the paths to the base14 metrics afm files. If no > config file is specified then no font will be configured, which will > obviously lead to rendering errors. > > I don't think this is a problem to provide a font-config file, neither > for the command-line nor for the programmatic ways of using Fop. > However, you may not like it; if this is the case we can discuss of > possibles workarounds. > > Anyway there is a case when this is kind of problematic: when the > transcoders are used through Batik to convert standalone svg files into > ps/pdf. It seems less acceptable here to ask the user to provide a > font-config file. > > It should be possible to bundle the base14 afm files and a default > config file together in a resources jar. I've never played with such > things so I don't know yet how to handle them, but that should be > feasible and moreover Batik seems to already use such a mechanism.
I can help with that. I don't want to force everyone to have to specify a configuration file, even for XSL-FO. If no config file is there the Base 14 font info from the AFMs should be read from the resources. > Due to that issue transcoders are currently broken; a quick-to-implement > solution may be to set up a system property that would contain the path > to a font-config file. Nah, there must be a way to pass in a default, built-in config. Custom font config should be optional. > Anyway, before doing anything in this area, I would like to hear the > opinion of the team. WDYT? Do you know of other possible solutions? > Thoughts, ideas? Well, I still have to have a look into the patch to come to a qualified opinion. Since this is important stuff, I'll put this on high priority. One very important thing will be to sort out how to handle the whole font stuff in the Batik area as the custom font support should probably be optional for the Transcoders so the dependency to FOrayFont doesn't become mandatory for Batik. Something like that. We'll figure out the details on the way. Anyway, as soon as we have the new font support in place I can finally start moving components to XML Graphics Commons and the transcoders over to Batik. IMO it will be important to tag FOP Trunk before we integrate the new font stuff so Batik can survive without a mandatory external dependency until the details are resolved. Jeremias Maerki
