Hello there, I've been working on central font management system. I've already written some test codes and built test packages, and concluded it useful enough. Please give me any comments about this system (especially font-related maintainers!) The main purpose of Debian Font Manager is to separte font itself and the proess of configration about the font, by having each application package do configure about fonts by using the hints supposed to be provided with each font. The current process of font configuration is combined to font itself and the configuration is done only for a specific application. For the rest of the applications, root needs to configure by hand. Don't you think it is a troublesome work? Separating font and the configuration would solve this problem IMHO. The way of configuration: Whenever a font is installed, the font package calls Font Manager with the hints of the font. Font Manager then calls scripts provided by applications that configure about fonts referring the hints (for example, by rewriting config files and running commands). An application package which make use of fonts must provide the scripts for each category of fonts that the application uses. For example, X may provide scripts for TrueType, bitmap, Type1 and CID, and ghostscript may provide scripts for TrueType, Type1, Type3 and CID. This configuration process mentioned above can be said as automated, so the problem about name space cannot be avoided. Sometimes several different fonts have the same identifier so Font Manager chooses only one of them to be actually configured, and also provides the method of choosing for uses. Sometimes lacking font is required in some situation (like Ryumin-Light-H is often required for printing Japanese PostScript file) so Font Manager substitutes other similar font for the lacking font. This is the second function of Font Manager. How do you think of this? Regards, -- Yasuhiro Take aka hirot / <take@debian.org>
Attachment:
pgp62RPnuAKdq.pgp
Description: PGP signature