Re: [Devel] Fonts with glyphs containing zero contours

[Keith Packard]

Around 16 o'clock on Feb 7, Detlef Würkner wrote:

> The glyphs are there. Not as outlines, but as embedded sfnt bitmaps.
> Since using embedded bitmaps if possible is default, it is reasonable
> that the glyph codes are listed in the unicode map.

Oops. I fixed my sample to load with NO_BITMAP and found the outlines 
present in the courier font.  

Now I'm having trouble with msmincho.ttf (http://keithp.com/~keithp/fonts/
msmincho.ttf).   This font has no fixed sizes; face->num_sbit_strikes is 0
so there really aren't any bitmaps associated with the font.

Loading glyphs from this font, I discover that out of 12481 glyphs,
I find some 4888 glyphs (other than space/nbsp) that load as outline
glyphs, but with zero contours.  Most of these "broken" glyphs occur in 
the Unicode CJK space.

Scanning the 9364 .ttf font files I found on my machine, I note that many 
of them have glyphs of this form.  I presume there are additional Unicode 
glyphs which are supposed to be blank, but a hundred of these fonts
have more than 100 "broken" glyphs.

> If you want contours only, you must include the FT_LOAD_NO_BITMAP flag.

No, what I'm after is building an accurate Unicode map; I need to know the 
list of glyphs that I can display at an arbitrary size -- those 
displayable only at certain fixed sizes are essentially useless.  I'm 
hoping that fonts don't do that; but I guess I should probably prepare for 
such contingencies.

Keith Packard        XFree86 Core Team        Compaq Cambridge Research Lab