The font subsystem is still far from finished. It's still quite complex to understand, unnecessarily so IMO. My font source idea still need to be implemented... Let's see if I can pull together some connectors.
As you've seen the Document class is a central class in font handling. It currently (not in my ideas) provides direct access to font metric information and to the list of fonts actually used in a rendering run (we don't always want to embedd them all). The setup of all fonts is done in the FontSetup class where the base 14 fonts are defined. Additionally, custom fonts are added there. But the custom fonts are mostly renderer-dependant, so at the moment, some font setup also takes place in PDFRenderer for example. See PDFRenderer.configure (which can build custom font information using an Avalon Configuration object using a helper method from FontSetup) and PrintRenderer.setupFontInfo which actually triggers the font setup. The fonts get registered with the Document object and subsequently is available to the layout engine. Most font classes in the fonts package deal with the different font formats (single byte und unicode, base und custom...). There's also a difference in audience: The layout needs different information (metrics in particular) than the renderers (primarily information for using and embedding the font in the target format. Just a quick write-up, but I hope it still helps a bit. On 15.03.2004 00:27:35 Peter B. West wrote: > Fops, > > What is the current situation with font information? I notice that the > Document class now contains a lot of Font setup information, whilst a > comprehensive set of font classes exists in ...fonts. I want to > introduce font information into alt-design as compatibly as possible > with HEAD. What do I need? Jeremias Maerki
