Re: [Indic-computing-devel] Roadmap - suggestions
Status: Alpha
Brought to you by:
jkoshy
From: Guntupalli K. <kar...@fr...> - 2001-12-24 14:16:32
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On Thu, 20 Dec 2001 01:23:11 -0800 (PST) jk...@Fr... (Joseph Koshy) wrote: > > g.k> We need free & open source fonts > g.k> - Define open source font . > g.k> - font licensed under an open source license > g.k> - all font data available in portable format , this includes foll. > g.k> - outline data > g.k> - mapping tables > g.k> - opentype tables > > Right. As of now, I'm only aware of METAFONT technology that allows > fonts to be described in "source" form. Is there any equivalent for > {True,Open}Type fonts? Truetype/Opentype font data is in binary format. tools can be written to extract outline info from them. In this context I would like to point to Pfaedit (http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net) . Currently it is the only complete (reasonably stable, but still under development) opensource tool to design Type1/Truetype fonts. Pfaedit stores all the font data as a spline font database (.sfd) (it uses cubic splines) , which is plain text. A sample for a glyph definition is given below ------------------ StartChar: exclam Encoding: 3073 3073 Width: 387 Flags: W VStem: 221 37<108 140> Fore 388 -16 m 1 387.333 -18.6667 379 -20 363 -20 c 0 333.667 -20 305.333 -10.3333 278 9 c 0 240.667 35.6667 221.667 73.6667 221 123 c 0 219.667 176.333 239.667 216.667 281 244 c 0 309.667 263.333 340.333 273 373 273 c 0 380.333 273 385.333 272.667 388 272 c 1 379.333 270 367 267 351 263 c 0 288.333 244.333 257.333 199 258 127 c 0 258 68.3333 278 26.6667 318 2 c 0 332.667 -6.66667 356 -12.6667 388 -16 c 1 EndSplineSet MinimumDistance: x8,-1 Ref: 255 N 1 0 0 1 0 0 Ref: 255 N 1 0 0 1 0 0 EndChar ----------------- When we are done with design , we use the Generate Font option to generate the final font in Type1, Postscript, Truetype, bitmap or bdf formats. So this .sfd can be cosidered as font source and can be released . If there are any reservations about the tool, I would say at present this is the only free good enough tool to do scalable font design in *nix platform. Regards, Karunakar |