The metric file contains information about a font such as its name and is bounding box. The fact that we use such a special file has historical reasons, mostly.
A long time ago, the only way to make a font work in FOP was to create such a file by hand (or to create a font class like Helvetica.java which even today is generated using XSLT). After that there was the PFMReader which took a Type 1 PFM file to generate that file which improved the whole thing a lot, not to mention the ability to add fonts without recompiling FOP. :-) Sure, that XML font metric file is not really necessary, but especially for Type 1 fonts it may be an important thing to have because the PFM file does not provide all the needed values. The missing ones can be found in the PFA or PFB file. But we don't have parsers for these two, yet. I often had to manually patch the generated XML font metrics. I think this was also necessary for certain TrueType fonts. Another point may be speed. Especially for the TrueType fonts it could be that reading the XML file is faster than interpreting the TrueType font. But there are ways around that. At any rate, the need for the XML font metric files will go away, eventually. Help is, as always, highly welcome. > Folks: > This may sound like an unusual question, but.... Why is the font > metrics file needed/used by FOP. What does it provide to FOP. I have been > using it blindly for the last year, just wondering. Jeremias Maerki --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
