Re: [Plplot-general] Script & Symbol Fonts?

[James T. <jt...@gm...>]

On 11 March 2013 15:22, Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> wrote:

> On 2013-03-11 14:35-0600 James Tappin wrote:
>
>  I have an application (Graffer: https://github.com/jtappin/**graffer.git<https://github.com/jtappin/graffer.git>
>> )
>> that uses plplot as its plotting engine, but when I try to use the script
>> or symbol fonts (plsfont(PL_FCI_SCRIPT,...) or plsfont(PL_FCI_SYMBOL,...)
>> I
>> just get the regular Sans-serif font.
>>
>> Is this because I don't have the needed fonts installed, or because the
>> various cairo (and epsqt) drivers don't support them?
>>
>
> The latter. Our qt and cairo devices just support serif, sanserif, and
> typewriter font families.  Search for fontFamily in
> bindings/qt_gui/plqt.cpp or familyLookup in drivers/cairo.c.
>
> The reason for this deliberate design choice for our two best device
> driver families (qt and cairo) is that we only want PLplot users to be
> able to constrain fonts in the most general way and let glyph-finding
> software (such as fontconfig) do its job to find the best glyph for
> the (generic) font that is specified.  "Best", of course, depends on
> individual choice, but the idea is that if you really want to be
> specific about fonts, then do the appropriate fontconfig configuration
> (or equivalent Qt4 font configuration) to deliver what you think is
> the "best" choice. I admit I have never actually done that because I
> have always been satisfied with the default fontcontig or Qt4 font choice.
>
> Also note that "script" and "symbol" fonts are a dated concept.
> For example, fontconfig would not know what to do with such font
> families since very few if any of the major font designs (all of which
> have serif, sanserif, and typewriter families) have script or symbol
> families.
>
> I hope this overview of what is going on with font choice and PLplot
> is a help to you.
>

Thanks Alan, that makes it much clearer what is goinf on,
James