The code exists in Maxwell and would be relatively easy to extract. Maybe
you consider it to be unecessary bloat, though?
Tom
On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Eric W. Sink wrote:
>
> Yes, the afm files are very, very necessary. They provide the font metrics
> which are used for the purpose of text layout. Printing would be
> impossible without those metrics.
>
> I should describe our restriction to Type1 fonts as being a "current"
> restriction. There is no reason why AbiWord could not be extended to
> support TrueType, for example. We have no immediate plans to do so, but it
> could be done.
>
> --
>
> > Ok. I can see that. My question is, are the afm files _really_
> >necessary? I would really like to be able to just direct abiword to my
> >/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/Type1 directory instead of downloading 1.7 meg
> >file.
> > Another thing are true type fonts. I can easily display them in any X
> >application using a font server (xfsft) and I would really like to be able
> >to use them in abiword (yes, I do have a coresponding fonts.dir file).
> >True type fonts can be embedded into postscript just as well as type1
> >fonts (as type42 font or something like that) all that is missing are
> >those blasted afm files. So once again, are they really necessary?
> >
> >-Filip
> >
> >
> >On Thu, 8 Apr 1999 Shaw Terwilliger wrote:
> >
> >> If this isn't in the fonts information on the web site, it really should
> >> be. We can't use X for all font information because X sucks--it doesn't
> >> leak enough information so that we can create printable documents.
> >> We can't get the raw Type1 fonts to embed in PostScript output through
> >> X, we can only get character metrics and pre-rendered bitmaps. To
> >> get the Type1 information, we need a copy of the fonts locally.
> >> GhostScript uses fonts this way, mapped through its Fontmap. X loads
> >> fonts through fonts.dir, and so people (and us, programmatically)
> >> don't have to maintain two seperate font lists, we parse the same fonts.dir
> >> to find our Type1 fonts.
> >>
> >> X has no concept of "printing"--it's just a window display system,
> >> and even scalable Type1 fonts are a relatively new thing to X
> >> (as of X11R5). Before that you had fixed resolution bitmap
> >> fonts which would be unreadable at 10 pixels high on a 600 DPI laser
> >> printer, but horribly aliased at 600 pixels high.
> >>
> >> We use Type1 fonts because they're portable (ASCII and binary formats
> >> easily converted using free tools), scalable (not resolution-dependent
> >> bitmaps), and there is a set of printables with GhostScript that
> >> look very nice on paper. They could use a few more hints for display,
> >> though, but zooming in on a document will give them a bit more space
> >> to smooth out.
>
> Eric W. Sink, Software Craftsman
> eric@abisource.com
>
>
>
>
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Tom Newton, Geneva Technology Limited email: tomn@gtl.com
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