> > What about using bitmap-only TrueType fonts, as planned by the X > > Windows people? > > Could you direct me to good information? I have serious doubts but > I'd at least like to read what they have to say.
http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/xfree86-bitmap-fonts.html I don't know the current status of such fonts w.r.t. X Windows. > Quite frankly it doesn't matter it FontForge supports a bitmap font > format because "xbitmap" is the ideal tool for making bitmap fonts. Please give an URL. Another good bitmap font editor is xmbdfed from Mark Leisher. > I also get the impression from some Apple papers i was browsing > recently that TTF/OpenType put the burden of knowing how to stack > combining characters and produce ligatures onto the software rather > than the font. Under such a system, applications will never support > all scripts unless they use one of the unweildy libraries with all > of this taken care of... This is the wrong impression. What you probably mean is that some language data needs to be proprocessed into a normalized form before it is fed into the font, for example Indic and Arabic scripts. However, it is possible to add arbitrary tables to the font (which is another advantage of the SFNT format) which could move this preprocessing into the font. > ...on the other hand, at least for bitmap fonts, simple rule-based > substitutions set up by the font designer can easily provide the > needed functionality with less than 5kb of code doing all the glyph > processing. This is handled by the GSUB table. There are many different formats, beginning with simple glyph replacing and ending with complex contextual glyph substitutions. > Right now we're at an unfortunate point where the core X font system > has been deprecated, but there is nothing suitable in its place. You should contact Keith Packard regarding this issue. I think there is just some delay in the conversion of PCFs to SFNT due to more important problems. > Moreover non-X unix consoles are essentially deprecated as well > since they lack all but some patronizing Euro-centric 512-glyph > "Unicode" support. Do you think someone is going to integrate > FreeType into Linux anytime soon? :) Why not? FreeType is very modular by design; it would be possible to remove almost everything but bitmap-only SFNT handling. Note, however, that this library doesn't interpret GSUB and other advanced OpenType tables by itself. You need Pango or something similar for this. > All problem solving is about choosing the right tool for the job. > Storing bitmap fonts in the TTF/OpenType framework is like using a > nuclear missile to toast fruit flies, or like driving an SUV to > commute to the office... You are underestimating the problem, I think. The proper bitmap format is the least important thing, and the compact SFNT bitmap formats are not a bad choice IMHO. Much more important is the ability to store the glyph substitution tables efficiently. > When it comes to character cell fonts (which is an even narrower > problem field than bitmap fonts), the goal is something that can > provide the baseline support for readable and correct display of any > script What about top-to-down scripts like Mongolian which can't be written horizontally? So I repeat my question: Which scripts do you imagine to support? > [...] I'm extremely bitter about the sad state of m17n on unix and > the fact that there is not even one working Unicode terminal with > simultaneous support for all scripts. There is a simple reason for this: What you want to do is impossible. There will never be a program which supports `all' scripts. Just think of Urdu, a special variant of Arabic, which isn't just a R2L script: It actually has this writing direction: / / / / / / / / / The longer a word, the bigger is its vertical height. > So with that said, I'll continue on with my draft bitmap font format > (which already has a lot more simplifications -- remember, a work of > art is only complete when you can't find anything left to _remove_ > from it), write my 5kb of code, integrate it into uuterm, and > somewhere in the next few months aim to have the first working > Unicode terminal emulator... in a 50kb static binary. Good luck in handling Arabic and Indic scripts -- and Mongolian :-) Werner -- Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
