"Cyrille Chepelov (home)" wrote:
>
> On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, Dave Airlie wrote:
>
> > so my main use for CGM would be editable-imports into MS-Word (no choice
> > here), so I am wondering how much trouble it would be to use truetype
> > fonts with dia and the CGM exporter.... I have ttf in my X system all
> > ready ...and would this solve the problem with the fonts in MS Word at
> > least?
>
> James: what about doing something in the CGM output like the file
> "t1-to-svg.c" in Gill does ? This could be user-configurable, some might
> even find that useful. Or maybe that would just bloat the output.
The problem with fonts is difficult. It is not so much that you have
the fonts loaded on your system (although that helps). The bigger
problem comes when you load that file on another system that does not
have those fonts. Then something (software) or someone (wetware) has to
decide what alternative font gets used and how to use it. All too often
the results are not pretty. Worse, there is also the display issue (X)
versus the printing issue (Ghostscript). Both have to be solved to make
a workable solution.
Because Linux does not have an easy method for handling fonts, it is a
safe bet that most people to whom you send a dia file will not have
non-standard *ix fonts. Thus display and printing of the sent file is
problematic.
This is a problem that is not specific to Dia. I'm a beta tester for
Corel's WordPerfect 2000. Moreover, I've had this same problem with the
Gimp. Both of those programs have to contend with the font issue in a
critical fashion. I hate to say it, but fonts are one place where the
Windows world is way ahead of the *ix world. (But then again, those
guys in Redmond always liked form over substance.)
I have some rather bitter experience with fonts on my network (I'm an
intellectual property attorney that doubles as a sysadmin for the firm's
Linux network). The lack of font support is one of the biggest factors
against converting from M$ to Linux.
To solve this problem, it would be helpful to devote some effort into
making the installation of fonts as easy as possible. Creating a font
installer for Gnome would be a great start. Collecting freeware fonts
into a central repository (e.g. http://fonts.gnome.org/) would be
another suggestion.
Ron
./.
