Re: [Fontforge-users] generating correct sfnt ttf files

[Qianqian F. <fa...@nm...>]

hi George and mpsuzuki

I briefly tested the latest fontforge (pulled from cvs) on WQY 
sfnt ttf font, a few new observations:

1. if I open the previously generated WQY ttf font with ff, 
   all latin basic glyphs are mistakenly marked as 
   partially missing (red squares)

2. download the pcf version of WQY font, import 9/10/11/12pt 
   faces to the opened WQY sfnt ttf font, ff complained that the
   "font file does not exist" and stopped importing.

3. create a empty font with fontforge, change encoding to 
   "Unicode BMP", and then import all WQY pcf font files,
( http://prdownloads.sfforge.net/wqy/wqy-bitmapfont-pcf-0.7.0-4.tar.gz?download )
   it goes through smoothly. however, if I choose
   dfont format from "Generate Font" dialog, ff returned
   without generating the dfont file.

4. in the above step, if I selected (faked) MS bitmap only sfnt,
   a file can be generated successfully (although fc-cache still 
   failed to generate the cache file due to the reasons mpsuzuki
   had pointed out, the difference between this sfnt ttf and the one
   generated from Fontforge 20050310 is that the font-cache file
   for the former is an empty file).

It seems to me that fontforge did nothing wrong in creating the 
sfnt ttf/sfnt otf files, however, the key issue is the support
from fontconfig (and ttmkfdir too, I don't know who is maintaining
this code). mpsuzuki's patch should be the best solution at this
point, I really hope it can be merged into the fc's main branch.

If I have time, I will do some debugging with ff and see
if I can find out explanations for my observations 1-3.

Qianqian


-------------- 2006-09-01 14:55:43 you written: ------------

>On Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:07:51 -0400
>Qianqian Fang <fa...@nm...> wrote:
>>> I was wrong -- the otb format does have a 'glyf' table. So if you want
>>> to avoid a glyf table entirely you would have to use the dfont output.
>>>
>>> However if you want to have a 'glyf' table with dummy outlines then you
>>> might what to try what is now called "(faked) MS bitmap only sfnt (ttf)"
>>
>>yes, dfont seems to be the best solution for pure multi-strike bitmap font.
>
>Ah, I slipped to notice a point. dfont is primarily a font file
>format for MacOS. The current freetype-2.1.8 (7?) and later includes
>platform-independent dfont support written by Masatake Yamato, but
>it is not enabled by default, and older versions don't have such at all.
>Possibly most of proprietary font libraries for Win32 or Unix (like
>that in Sun Java) don't support dfont at all.
>
>Regards,
>mpsuzuki
>
>

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