Re: backart heaven...

[Alexander Malmberg]

Pete French wrote:
> 
> > Yes, that's possible. The .nfont bundles will be ignored by OPENSTEP,
> > and back-art will use both .nfont bundles and (most) .font bundles.
> 
> Sounds good, I'll do that. I assume OSX fonts are in a different format
> are they,or can I just dump those in too ?

I don't know, but I think they are in a different format.

> I am going to get this
> up and running at work now (assuming tthat CVS comes back...) which means
> no more horrible X font isues.
>
> BTW - is there sme lisence restriction as to why GNUstep cant just install
> a few fonts under Library/Fonts as part of the general install ? They arent
> very big and it would save having this question asked umpteen times.

I've started working on a -back(-art) resource package which will
include some basic nfonts and a few utilities for dealing with nfonts.

My plan is to include the "freefont":s (www.nongnu.org/freefont) since
they are suitable to use as Helvetica, Courier, and Times, and cover a
decent set of characters. These are gpl:ed. but unfortunately, they
aren't hinted at all.

I was hoping the Vera fonts would be well-hinted alternatives that could
be used for Helvetica/Courier/Times, but they aren't. They _are_
will-hinted and very nice to use, but they aren't very similar (shape,
size, metrics) to Helvetica et al, so they can't be used for that. I'd
still like to include them and suggest that they be used as the default
system font. Does anyone know what the GNU/FSF position is on the Vera
license?

Also, I'd include skeleton nfonts for microsoft's "webfonts", and some
way of semi-automatically getting them (see
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/).


As for utilities, it'd include mknfonts, a nice application that wraps
around it (once one has been written :), and tools (and patches, if
necessary) that let you use nfonts with other programs. I have some
really ugly hacks that I use to use them with ghostscript, but I think
fontconfig is what most would be interested in.

- Alexander Malmberg