Subject: UNIX & Fonts -- the big view
From: Stefan Rieken (StefanRieken@SoftHome.net)
Date: Sat Apr 29 2000 - 18:08:37 CDT
Hello,
This message is sent, to quote ESR, because I am trying to "scratch" my
"itch". If you feel that this is the wrong place to start scratching,
let me know.
I chose to start scratching here, because AbiWord is one of the programs
that suffers from the bad font support in X Windows-based systems.
Your current solution is to avoid using the X fonts, I believe? Or
otherwise, you only use a subset of these fonts, probably those that are
complete and well (I heard people claim that e.g. the FreeFonts package
is far from clean).
You are not the only people who are moving font support into the program
because the system doesn't provide them in a good way. The GIMP has also
announced that they will render TrueType fonts from within the program
itself.
I personally dislike using TrueType, not because of the quality of these
fonts (I am no expert in this), but because it is not unifying - X will
remain to use other fonts by default.
Anyway, it should be clear that fonts are real orphans in a Linux
system. When quality counts, you can't address X for fonts. But there is
also no other entity by default responsible for rendering quality fonts.
So this is what I dislike:
- using crappy X fonts
- every app its own font engine
- though there are only about 10 interesting fonts for UNIX, 100 of
different font *types* exist.
This is my proposal:
- a good font library that would be propagated as the "official" way to
use quality font rendering in GNOME and KDE,
- selecting only one type to support, looking at quality, but also at
being supported by X (e.g. postscript fonts (?))
- creating conversion programs for that type to enable people to use all
those TrueType fonts out there.
- making a cool graphical font creator program to enable typophiles
(like me) to use Linux. I personally would love to be able, for my
cartoons, to make a font of my own handwriting. I once did that on
Windows, result is a (somewhat badly rendered) TrueType file. I have
hard times to install it in Linux and have all apps (including Abi) to
support it. So additionally, I'd like:
- one directory to put all that fonts in. Fonts of that one superior
type. Not an extra xfstt needed. No fp+ rehash blah blah. "Just Gimme
One Vision."
- standard apps can display their simple texts through X Windows,
complex apps can render their texts through this font library.
Summary: a standard, *sufficient* way to handle fonts in Linux (or,
[insert your favorite UNIX]), and a good conversion tool so that we can
profit of all the fonts available for Windows. On top of that: generally
easy to maintain.
Now if you read this far, you probably have an idea of my *real*
problem. Because if I could, I would have started this project long time
ago and now everything was solved. But even though I can theoretically
program very well, I have never done a big project before, only really
small education-style ones.
Now to quote from Abiword: "If you're a developer, feel free to add code
[..]. Otherwise, please be patient."
I have been patient about this font stuff for so long, and still nobody
has stood up to solve it (they're all busy with stuff like GNOME,
AbiWord, Linux, etc ;-). So I think the best thing I can do now is show
you my plans, get your feedback, and see what I can do with it, myself.
(See if people are enthousiast, too.)
From very recent experience, I learnt that the Linux community does not
just provide technical help through its communication channels, but that
they are also very willing to help you solving design problems. All I
needed was a vision of what I wanted to do, and the folks were so nice
to give me a hint on which books to read, etc.
So I hope that you can help me figuring out how to set up a project like
this (if you'd like to set it up yourself, that's also OK :-), or how
else I could get unified font support for Linux. (I think that there are
already several tools available, but this is not the same as a
user-friendly, commonly accepted standard.)
With many thanks for reading even until this line,
and thanks in advance for any response,
Stefan Rieken
-- "We don't have the time to sit and cry, or to wonder why" -- Tindersticks
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Sat Apr 29 2000 - 18:03:52 CDT