Re: [changeset] print.m (matlab compatibility)

[Daniel J Sebald]

Shai Ayal wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Daniel J Sebald <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > John W. Eaton wrote:
> >
> > > On 10-Mar-2009, Shai Ayal wrote:
> > >
> > > | On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 6:39 AM, Ben Abbott <address@hidden>
> > > | > Without having a scalable font, I don't know how to reconcile this.
> > > | >
> > > | > Would it be possible to include a single ttf, or pfa file with Octave?
> > > | >
> > > | | I think we might need to include some ttf/pfa fonts anyway for the
> > > | opengl-renderer.
> > > | The main problem is that that there is that there are no canonical
> > > | fonts in well known locations in linux, so the best thing would
> > > | probably be to include some with octave.
> > >
> > > So every application that needs some fonts should include them?  That
> > > seems bad.  Is there no way we can just depend on some font handling
> > > library and expect it to provide the fonts for us?  And in the current
> > > case, Octave is not even using the fonts directly, so it seems that
> > > gnuplot is the thing that should be dealing with this (though I
> > > understand that we will need to deal with it directly in Octave at
> > > some point).  So is it really our problem, or is it a packaging
> > > problem that should be handled by whoever is building Octave (and
> > > gnuplot) packages?
> >
> > Fonts have always been a headache, except for perhaps Apple, the history of
> > which actually comes more from NeXT, I think.
> >
> > I was going to suggest as part of the release to include a "recommended
> > packages" sort of thing that instructs Debian/SUSE/Fedora/RedHat/etc.
> > builders how to write package dependencies for gnuplot/octave.
> >
> > Does Matlab unix have Helvetica?  Or is that a Windows-only sort of thing
> > because of font-name copyright?
>
>
> I don't know about font name, but in
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica#Similar_typefaces
> there is even a GPL's alternative

Well, its name isn't Helvetica--which is partly why I inquired about unix.  ("Triumvirate" is an interesting 
choice of name.)  We've been refering to Helvetica, because it is so common, but in GPL parlance, there is no 
"Helvetica", as this article would lead to believe.  However, I do see in the font list for OpenOfficeWriter 
that there is a "Helvetica", but the default font is "Nimbus Roman No9 L".

Going a little further, I can select the font properties for gnome.  "Helvetica" is not in the 
list, but "Nimbus Sans L" is.  (So, I don't know where OpenOffice gets its "Helvetica" 
from, but it does in fact look like Helvetica and not some similitude.)

As far as gnuplot, another issue is that main developers have historically not 
been Windows users (everything but).  So, Helvetica support hasn't been a 
priority, and neither has compatibility across platforms, I suspect.

What Octave should probably be doing behind the scenes is mapping all names to equivalent names which are system 
dependent.  For example, "Helvetica" would get mapped to "Helvetica" on Windows, 
"NimbusSansL" on unix.  (Actually, it should probably be mapped to "NimbusSansL" in both cases 
since that font is GPL.)

Dan