Re: [ft-devel] Understanding Type1 fonts

[mpsuzuki]

Hi,

On Wed, 9 Jan 2008 12:27:38 +0200
Donn <address@hidden> wrote:
>On Wednesday, 09 January 2008 11:51:46 Werner LEMBERG wrote:
>> No.  PFM is a special (binary) format of AFM used on Windows only.
>> You can completely ignore them.  So
>>
>>    PBA,PBF -> AFM
>Are those new types or typos?
>PBA? PBF?

Oh, maybe typos of PFA and PFB.

>So, to clarify, you advise that:
>1. If I find a PFB file without an AFM, just use the PFB (i.e. link into 
>~/.fonts)
>2. If I find a PFB with a partner AFM file, use both (i.e. link both into 
>~/.fonts)
>3. If I find a PFA file without an AFM, just use the PFA
>4. If I find a PFA with a partnet AFM, use both.
>5. Ignore any and all PFM files.

Umm, Werner may recommend you to use PFM fallback - if AFM
is found, use it, if AFM is not found but PFM is found, use it.
So 2 & 4 are OK, but 1/3/5 would be slightly different.

One of the decision we have to consider for first is:
"~/.fonts" should include the files missing outline data?

I think, fontconfig expects that all files in ~/.fonts
are independent files. It executes FT_New_Face() for each
files, if FreeType2 returns a (number of) faces, fontconfig
registers each faces into database. At present, fontconfig
does not search AFM nor PFM, and its database does not
provide informations about the exists of AFM and PFM.

As a result, the application have to search AFM (or PFM
for fallback?). I'm not sure if application designer is
so ambitious to implement such by themselves. I wish if
fontconfig provides such data, but I'm not sure fontconfig
developers will agree. Linking AFM/PFM in ~/.fonts should
be discussed after that, I think.

Regards,
mpsuzuki