Hi Phil: Although I promised myself not to say much more on this topic, I find there are still some further important points to make.
On 2014-11-05 18:32-0000 Phil Rosenberg wrote: > Hi Alan, Arjen > So I guess the answer is that tex does use fontconfig - or at least some > brands of latex do. I obfuscated this important point by introducing that backgrounder where the essential point should have been stated that xelatex does not use fontconfig to _find_ fonts so there is still a huge xelatex limitation where fonts can only be specified by the absolutely archaic file name method. But the xelatex app absolutely must use freetype to help _render_ unicode glyphs for the fonts that are chosen with that archaic method. And freetype use (or some other Cygwin software that is installed as part of the TeX suite of packages) likely depends on fontconfig configuration. So for what it is worth you should mention xelatex when reporting to the Cygwin mailing list, in case it matters. > I imagine that the any version of the FreeFonts files will work so long as they are somewhere fontconfig can find them. I think you are right but please confirm that with one final experiment. After we have the results of that experiment, you (or Arjen) can take those results to the Cygwin list to help them to permanently address this Cygwin bug turned up by our docbuild with xelatex. To explain further, on Linux (and the Cygwin package finding facility for "etc/fonts" confirms this for Cygwin as well) fontconfig can be configured both by an individual user and also by system configuration files (see /etc/fonts/conf.d/README both for Linux and Cygwin [for package libfontconfig1-2.11.1-1] ) where (of course) the user version can selectively override the system version. So your current user version of the fontconfig configuration file is essentially a workaround for a Cygwin system problem with fontconfig configuration; Cygwin developers forgot that certain Cygwin fonts (i.e., all the Tex ones) are not installed in /usr/share/fonts. Instead, the TeX ones are installed in /usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts. That is not a mistake, TeX distributions typically demand their own unique prefix location for fonts so their font indexer that makes font look up super-quick only need to scan through a relatively small number of directories rather than a whole operating system of directories. Apparently on Cygwin that TeX font prefix is /usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts (and definitely not /usr/share/fonts). So here is the experiment: Configure your local fontconfig to use the /usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts location following what is currently said by you in doc/docbook/README.developers. If that works (and I assume it will from the other experiments that have been reported earlier by you) for a Cygwin install with unmolested /usr/share/fonts/OTF, then take exactly what the original PLplot documentation build problem to the Cygwin list as well as your exact user fontconfig change to work around it. The point of this is to convince them to change their system configuration of fontconfig to address the issue so that PLplot documentation builders on Cygwin don't have to use the workaround. For an additional backgrounder, if you look at /etc/fonts/conf.d/README you will see that system configuration of fontconfig is spread over a large number of different files. This is so that individual packages can fiddle with that system configuration without messing up font configuration of any other package. Thus, the Cygwin issue definitely belongs to the texlive-collection-fontsextra package because their package (like all font-related packages) has permission to add symlinks in /etc/fonts/conf.d and files in /etc/fonts/conf.avail according to the above README to append /usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts to the directories that fontconfig searches for fonts. Doing everything documented in the README file to present the Cygwin developers with a complete solution that works for you is probably not necessary, and may not work since there may be something extra you have to do as well. But if you are interested further, you might want to give system configuration of Cygwin fonts according to that README a try, and let the Cygwin developers know the results of that experiment compared to user configuration to do the same thing. > Finally and off topic re top posting. Unfortunately I am often emailing using my phone (as I am now) so splitting the email is more than a bit difficult. In fact when emails get split it is often difficult for me to tell what is old and new material which is probably why I have missed details in the past. Apparently, according to legend a similar "inability to conveniently edit" issue with early versions (and maybe later versions as well) of outlook started Windows users down the top-posting path, and it is a real shame this limitation continues years later for the phone mailing software you have chosen to use. Is that mailing app you use from your phone something put together by yahoo? If so, that is a strong second reason to move out of there to a real mail service provider. For example, I would be tremendously surprised (although I haven't tried it myself) if gmail made it inconvenient for users to edit e-mail. Timing misjudgments where a major change is delayed much too long happen a lot. For example, I love git now, and I _am_ kicking myself my personal doubts delayed moving PLplot to git for many months after Hazen's famous post. But we are there now, thank God, and already seeing lots of benefits. Please don't delay your escape from the Yahoo mailing software too much longer; we don't want to lose you to a broken lower extremity from kicking yourself so hard. :-) Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
