On 10/14/2013 5:17 PM, Lars Huttar wrote:
Hi Wolfgang,
let me try to answer ...
I'm doing an overhaul of font handling in our large project, and
wondering whether I should switch to simplefonts at this point.
Tor a a real long term robust font usage it all depends on where you
store your fonts: if you rely on the operating systems setup you could
burn yourself in the long run with any setup, unless you use typescripts
+ filenames but when you keep fonts in your project tree you can use
selectfont (aka simplefonts) when it does the right job for you.
Can you tell me, how mature is simplefonts? Is it ready for heavy-duty,
complex production use?
The font system is sort of layered:
-- low level \font commands: most robust
-- \definefont: wrapper around this
-- typescripts: combines fonts in groups, create abstraction
-- fallbacks: combine fonts into one
-- typefaces: sets up a collection of fonts
In identifying fonts there are methods like file, name, spec and file is
the most robust.
Selectfonts runs on top of all this, and given that its way of doing it
has been around for a while (apart from the current implementation being
done from scratch), it's pretty mature. If things change in the low
level api (unlikely) I'm sure selectfont will adapt which is also easier
now that it's in the core.
Also, is it superceding the standard ConTeXt font handling? That is,
should I expect to find better help available from this list for issues
with simplefonts? Will new development be focused more on simplefonts?
It is not a font mechanism, but a wrapper that generates unseen the
standard commands. So, it runs on top of the font mechanism and not
alongside; it's not a matter of replacing but of convenience. If you
have a crappy font setup or use fuzzy names of use fonts that have
confusing properties, nothing will help and you can't blame selectfont,
but it will do its best to help you as much as possible.
Improvements might be possible in the heuristics, but I'm pretty sure
that Wolfgang already covered most of it. If there are issues, then the
challenge is to see if they are general enough to become part of the
heuristics. In that process improvements might migrate into other places.
As it's now in the core, you can probably expect more of the (mw)
examples to use it which is educational too.
(Btw, this new modules is a nice examples of hybrid coding.)
Hans
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