I want to display mathematics text in a Java2D application (i.e. not an applet).
There is already an excellent program IDVI that does this in applets, but for various
reasons
I want to develop another one for applications. For this purpose,
it is absolutely necessary to use
the fonts associated with Don Knuth's TEX. No font substitution
is acceptable. The highest quality fonts available without cost
are those released by BlueSky in Type1 format and available in CTAN archives.
1. The ideal solution would be for me to read the BlueSky fonts directly into my
application from files located in the directory of the application. (I certainly
do not want hundreds of undergraduate students to have to
deal with installation of system fonts.)
However:
(a) currently, Font.createFont(int, InputStream) only accepts TrueType
fonts as input.
(b) as far as I can tell, although Java2D can display Type1 fonts it does not
apply anti-aliasing to them (which it does, apparently, to TrueType).
Not even when I convert the glyphs to shapes, as far as I can tell
(which would probably destroy the font's hinting, anyway).
What are Sun's plans for dealing with these problems? These same problems are
probably met in dealing with internationalization more generally
(after all, mathematics is a kind of international language). It is hard to
see Java2D as a professional typesetter's tool until they are fixed.
2. There are other difficulties associated with (a): on my LINUX machine
I cannot use Font.createFont() at all, even fo some characters appear OK,
including the basic ones such as the standard alphabet, but
*most* characters - and nearly all the specifically mathematical ones -
appear only as empty boxes. These appear OK in the Type1 fonts
inside Java (although, as I mention above, rather jagged). What's going on?
Bill Casselman
Mathematics Department
University of British Columbia
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