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Re: [fonts-ibm-plex] switching from OTF to TTF



Quoting Paride Legovini (2019-01-24 22:38:35)
> Jonas Smedegaard wrote on 24/01/2019:
> > Quoting Paride Legovini (2019-01-24 14:23:45)
> >> Jonas Smedegaard wrote on 24/01/2019:
> > 
> >>> I noticed recently that some font packages provide both TrueType 
> >>> and OpenType.  Would be quite interesting to understand what 
> >>> potential breakage to look out for in such packages, or e.g. which 
> >>> version of Fontconfig started to treat such scenario sensibly.
> >>
> >> Good question: I think packages should not install both TTF and OTF 
> >> files for the same font. I'd consider it a bug.
> > 
> > Uhm, could you (or anyone) elaborate what you believe the bug is?
> 
> Maybe "bug" is not the most appropriate word, but I believe it is a 
> packaging defect. While the intention of the maintainer is to provide 
> both the available versions, the result is a situation where AFAIK 
> there is no way to tell freetype which version to use. Even telling 
> which version is being used (and if it is used consistently) is not 
> obvious.

If difficult to tell which font is used, then it seems to me the word is 
something related to "superfluous" or "irrelevant".

More detailed, my theory here is that it is harmless in general to ship 
both TrueType and OpenType with same name - i.e. Fontconfig reports 
both, most applications simply grab any of them (some maybe randomly, 
some maybe favoring on or the other format), and the net result is 
ordinary users don't notice the difference.

My point is, there are corner cases of applications doing better (or 
working at all) with one or the other format.  If those corner cases har 
helped by shipping both formats, and normal cases are not crippled by 
it, then I'd say it is _not_ superfluous or irrelevant, it is better!

But I am theorizing here.  We can benefit from actual concrete knowledge 
here.

Here are some cases I (vaguely) know about which might be relevant:

Scribus consults Fontconfig and supports OpenType features, but only in 
its experimental 1.5 branch.  I don't recall the details but vaguely 
remember one case I helped by partner bugfix a professional job where 
the solution was (as I recall) to pick a non-OpenType format of a font 
because some needed ligatures was unreachable from Scribus 1.4 in the 
OpenType format and (difficult but) possible to reach with TrueType.

XeTeX and LuaTeX consults Fontconfig and supports OpenType features, but 
depending on configuration (e.g. default template used in Pandoc) might 
behave better in some cases when a non-OpenType font is available as 
well.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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