On Nov 8, 2007 10:01 AM, Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thursday 08 November 2007 6:10:46 am Rebecca York wrote: > > Yes, but I am not familiar with Linux, so I want to ask if I > > use a certain type face in my convert command, which set of > > font face would be the safe one, e.g. Times, Arial etc. > > >> Helvetica :) > > Helveticaa is a Mac Font, not a Linux font. Don't think I've ever > had a font on Linux called Helvetica. > -- > Scott > Linux user #: 246504
$BEGIN RANT(fonts) Technically, Helvetica is a (copyrighted) Adobe typeface, which is expressed in a font program (aka font file format). Different font file formats are usable on Macs, PCs, OR Linux. Some font file formats, like OpenType (.OTF on Windows), can be used on several platforms. And there are font editors, such as fontforge (fontforge.sourceforge.net), that can readily convert ANY font file to one that you can use on your platform. (But be legal! Fonts are *SOFTWARE* and are owned by the inventor. Be sure to respect the licensing requirements of your fonts. I believe it is fair use to convert a font you have licensed to a format you can use, but distributing fonts to third parties is less likely to be permissible.) Whether Helvetica (or any other font) is available on any particular Linux installation depends on whether the administrator has installed it. But there is nothing preventing anyone from installing Helvetica on a Linux machine. (If you want to get even more technical, Helvetica is a whole family of fonts, with variants like bold, italic, heavy, extra heavy, black, extra heavy condensed, light condensed oblique, etc., etc. Typeface designers have entirely too much time on their hands.) Helvetica is part of the default Macintosh distribution, and has been for decades. Microsoft opted not to license Helvetica from Adobe, instead licensing a very similar-looking font called Arial from a ripoff company, excuse me, an alternative font vendor called Monotype. Helvetica is one of the "default 13" fonts that must always be present (or automatically substituted) in any Postscript interpreter; Ghostscript -- which is available on PC, Mac, Linux, and a whole bunch of other platforms -- obeys this requirement, substituting calls for Helvetica with a free (as in speech) font called NimbusSans that looks very much like Helvetica (just as Arial does). So if you were using Ghostscript for your application, you could be positive that Helvetica was available. ImageMagick is not a Postscript interpreter, however, and so its font operations cannot depend on the presence of Helvetica. ImageMagick does call on Ghostscript (which must be installed separately) in order to convert PDF or Postscript into a raster file, and so any EPS or PDF that calls on Helvetica can depend on working correctly with ImageMagick (if Ghostscript is installed). $END RANT _______________________________________________ Magick-users mailing list [email protected] http://studio.imagemagick.org/mailman/listinfo/magick-users
