Re: FYI pango/font status

[Werner LEMBERG]

> * Remove all support code for encoding within LilyPond.  [...]
>   Encoding is either handled by (La)TeX, or by Pango.  This means
>   that
>
>     \encoding
>
>   will disappear, as will the inputencoding field in \layout{}

We need a new command to select the backend -- I propose \TeXformat
and \PSformat so that the `-f ps' and `-f tex' switches become
obsolete.

> * We still could have LilyPond call iconv to convert other encodings
>   to UTF-8, but my feeling is that this does not really add to the
>   functionality. How is UTF8 support for other (non-emacs) editors,
>   and what encodings besides latin1 are currently used for .ly
>   files?

I suggest to let convert-ly do this job, namely to convert all files
from latin-1 to UTF-8 which have been written for lilypond versions
before 2.8.0.  We've never supported something different, right?

> * How do we deal with kerning in Pango?  AFAIK, Pango does not read
>   AFM/TFM files, so how can it compute kernings?

IIRC Owen has mentioned that he plans to support reading of AFM files
for Type 1 fonts to get kerning.  Kerning from OpenType should be
supported already (but I'm not sure).

> * all font files should either be loaded through FC or by Lily
>   directly.  Lily does not link to kpathsea anymore.

This is fine for the PS backend.  For the TeX backend, we should still
support reading of TFM files.

> * Question: can we load TFM files through FC?

AFAIK, no.

> * the CMR fonts do not have characteristics defined; the type1 fonts
>   just list fontname = "cmbx12".  We should have a separate package,
>   which collects all TeX type1 fonts (using kpathsea), defines
>   style/weight/etc. characteristics and generates appropriate FC
>   cache files.

Do you mean an additional configuration file which FC shall read?

> * How do we deal with design sizes?  We can kludge them onto
>   font-weight and/or font-stretch.  It would be best if a feature
>   was added to FC, where we can specify design sizes.

Write to Keith Packard -- a similar problem exists for Multiple
Masters fonts, so maybe there is something available already.

>   Another option is to make FC return font-sets, and make sure that
>   all related design sizes are returned as a single fontset
>   eg. containing cmr6 to cmr17.  Then LilyPond could try to
>   determine design sizes, and select which font to use.

My knowledge of FC is too limited to give a definite answer.



    Werner