Font Mismatches (Was: Need Reference Output)

[Matthias Neeracher]

On Jan 25, 2005, at 2:56 PM, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:

> address@hidden writes:
> > On Jan 25, 2005, at 2:12 PM, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> >
> > > current CVS.
> > >
> > >
> > > <les-nereides.ps>
> >
> > Ah, thanks for mailing this! (Cc'ing to the mailing list to prevent 
> > duplicate efforts :-)
> >
> > It looks like the fonts I get may actually be correct (or at least in 
> > agreement with mainstream lilypond at the moment).
>
> We have century schoolbook for the PS output, by default. Perhaps you
> were expecting Computer Modern? 

Ah, I think it all becomes clearer now: Rather to my surprise, Mac OS X does NOT ship with Century Schoolbook TrueType fonts (Earlier versions of MacOS must have shipped with it, because I distinctly remember the font), and to the best of my knowledge, it's not available as a free, legal download anywhere. Therefore, some substitutions are taking place and the result looks less than great. If I substitute a family that does exist on the Mac (e.g. Times), everything looks perfectly fine.

Is there a compelling reason to make Century Schoolbook the default (apart from the fact that it's very readable) or is there a chance Lilypond could standardize on something different? I hate having to be difficult for the sake of my platform, but it seems to me that the Lilypond community would be best served if the default font settings produce largely identical documents on all platforms. 

Matthias

Attached is a list of the fonts that are shipped on MacOS X by default (with some obviously unreasonable choices removed). 

Helvetica
Times
LucidaGrande
Courier
AmericanTypewriter
Courier New                     
Herculanum.
Trebuchet MS
Arial                          
BigCaslon                 
Didot.dfont                     
MarkerFelt                
Verdana
Arial Black                     
Brush Script                    
Futura                    
Optima                    
Arial Narrow                    
Cochin                    
Georgia                         
Papyrus                   
Zapfino
Arial Rounded Bold              
Comic Sans MS                   
GillSans                  
Baskerville               
Copperplate               
HelveticaNeue             
Times New Roman