Re: [ft] family_name of FT_FaceRec

[Werner LEMBERG]

> In the table on the TrueType "name" table that I'm looking at (forgot 
> where I got it from) it says "Preferred Family (Windows only)".

Mhmm.  Looks incorrect.

> What does it say in the official TrueType specs (which I don't know
> where to find)?

There's a link from FreeType's web pages...

  http://www.microsoft.com/typography/SpecificationsOverview.mspx

Here the description of the two fields:

  16 Preferred Family; For historical reasons, font families have
     contained a maximum of four styles, but font designers may group
     more than four fonts to a single family.  The Preferred Family
     allows font designers to include the preferred family grouping
     which contains more than four fonts.  This ID is only present if
     it is different from ID 1.

  17 Preferred Subfamily; Allows font designers to include the
     preferred subfamily grouping that is more descriptive than ID 2.
     This ID is only present if it is different from ID 2 and must be
     unique for the the Preferred Family.

> It seems that OS/2 has no way to ask for arbitrary attributes, so
> asking for "condensed" just like we ask for "bold" won't work,
> unless it is part of the family name. Additionally, I am not sure
> how else "DejaVu Sans Condensed" could be used in webpages. (I am
> using FreeType in the OS/2 version of Firefox and this is the
> problem that I was asked about.)  font-family would only be "DejaVu
> Sans" and I would need to use the CSS font-stretch property which
> Gecko doesn't implement (and some other browers don't do that,
> either).

If you unconditionally want ID 1 and ID 2, please use FT_GetSfnt_Name.


    Werner