Re: the art backend and font

[Derek Zhou]

On Monday 25 November 2002 11:11 am, you wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:56:28AM -0800, Derek Zhou wrote:
> > My beef about gnustep was the way it handle fonts and text. The xlib
> > backend cannot use all the fonts that I have, and try to use some fonts
> > that I actually don't have, and no AA. etc. Now we have this promising
> > art backend, but then I am required to hack up an nfont package for each
> > of my fonts, and put them under the GNUstep directory? Why can't we just
> > behave like everybody else (KDE2, GNOME2), and use whatever provided by
> > X? Being 100% OPENSTEP compatible is pointless, I'd rather have something
> > usable sooner. Sorry for flaming.
> > Derek
>
> <my opinion>
>
> Well, because nfonts are a much much better way of handling fonts ?
> It's far more easier for the user to deal with nfont packages, which
> includes all the font styles in one place, than dealing with multiple TTF
> files for the *same* font.
>
> Of course, it could be a problem if nfonts aren't numerous. But
> that's not exactly the case : check
> ftp://ftp.peak.org/next-ftp/next/fonts/index.html for example. And you
> could quite easily make a nfont package with TTFs.
>
> I agree that it's a problem when you want to cohabit with already existing
> TTF fonts... but honnestly, the hard disk space isn't exactly expensive,
> and the advantage for the user is worth that.
>
> </my opinion>
Sorry for didn't find your collection of numerous Nextstep fonts. However, 
those are old PS type 1 fonts, not nfonts. Furthermore, I can't find any 
non-latin fonts, let alone DBCS fonts. It would be great if the TTF->nfonts 
procedure can be more automatic because most fonts in use today are TTFs. 
BTW: are you sure those Nextstep fonts can be freely redistributed?
Derek