Re: Why dose art not use fontconfig?

[Jesse Ross]

On Aug 23, 2007, at 12:39 AM, Jeff Teunissen wrote:

> Any font that has many uses is the same way, with many faces for  
> different
> purposes and desired results. Typography is more than just  
> "Regular, Bold,
> Italic, Bold Italic" and it deserves a good system to handle its  
> complexity.
> The OpenStep (and by extension, Cocoa) text network is rich enough  
> to handle
> the complexity of professional typography, it just needs to be  
> exercised.
>
> Fontconfig is a fine tool for what it is, really it is. It's just  
> not capable
> of dealing with anything beyond the basics. To make life easier for  
> real
> people, you have to do more. :)

I was the person who suggested that Isaiah create Font Manager, and I  
also suggested he build it on top of fontconfig exclusively. This was  
under the assumption that to use any font with the art backend was to  
have to convert it into a "strange", "non-standard" format, unused by  
the rest of the world, thus resigning us to an environment of only  
Helvetica and whatever else happened to be already converted to nfont.

After having read Jeff's history of nfont and the impetus behind it,  
and actually taking the time to learn how nfonts work, I realize that  
I was letting my ignorance get the better of me. Nfonts seem like a  
smart idea and I am going back on my suggestion of all-out abandoning  
them for fontconfig.


However, for the casual user unconcerned with typography (and even  
for those who are, see below), I don't see an issue with Isaiah's  
suggestion that Font Manager generate an nfont file. The important  
point here is to see that as the first step. Casual users could stop  
there, and use the font as it is. The conversion to an nfont package  
should be as invisible as possible for those concerned only with  
having a certain font available. For those who want a better  
typographic experience, that generated nfont package doesn't have to  
be the end. I'm imagining something like iTunes and it's ID3-editing  
interface as the front end to the nfont plist.

Imagine you do install DejaVu via Font Manager, and end up with the 5  
nfont packages that occur as a result of mknfonts. Shouldn't it be  
possible to drag the Font Manager entry for DejaVu Serif Condensed on  
top of DejaVu Serif and have those be automatically joined into a  
single nfont (and thus a single entry in the font selection list)?  
Clicking on the new DejaVu Serif listing should allow the user to  
select a menu option named something like "Edit Font Settings", where  
they are given a nice UI for modifying any of the given options for  
an nfont, such as the RenderHints or Localized name.

Maybe I'm missing some technical reason why this is bad or not  
feasible, but it seems like a good way give everyone what they want:  
your typographic experience is directly proportionate to how much  
time you put in tweaking and modifying your font settings (or  
searching out fonts that are already pre-packaged as hand-crafted  
nfonts). Lazy or apathetic users can grab any font they want, knowing  
they will work; typophiles can tweak plist settings in a way that is  
more integrated with Font Manager in order to have fonts rendered and  
listed exactly as they want.

J.