[CLUE-Tech] Sean's questions from Scribus presentation

[Matt Gushee]

On Thu, Sep 16, 2004 at 09:53:22PM -0600, Collins Richey wrote:
> 
> > PS: if you do get the FontSite 500, you will save yourself some trouble
> >     by using the TrueType fonts for OpenOffice but Type 1 for everything
> >     else. I can explain why if anybody wants to know.
> > 
> 
> Yes, please do.

OK. Well, there seems to be a bug--it's unclear to me whether it is in
the fonts themselves, in FreeType, or in X, but there are certain font
families that don't work in their TrueType versions. When I say "don't
work," that not working shows up in a couple of different ways, but both
pretty serious. In the GIMP and Scribus, those fonts just don't get
rendered--i.e. you type some text, set it to one of the problem fonts,
and you get a blank space where your text is supposed to be. Galeon and
GVim crash. The error messages I've seen refer to a floating point
exception.

Actually, I think I asked about this on the CLUE-Tech a couple months
ago; nobody had heard of such a thing before. Anyway, I've had this
happen now on my old Debian system and now on Arch Linux, with different
versions of XFree86, GTK, and Qt. I think the version of FreeType2 is
more-or-less the same, though, which makes it the prime suspect in my
mind. I suppose I should file a bug report.

The Type 1 versions fine in all apps I've tried that support Type 1
fonts.

Now, about OpenOffice, the problem there is that it doesn't handle
variants quite right. If you install a font that has variants other than
Roman, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic, (e.g. extra bold, outline, etc.)
it sometimes gives you one of the non-standard variants in place of
regular Roman, and the real Roman is inaccessible. Now I have gotten the
impression that this problem is less severe with TrueType fonts, but
after checking again, I'm not sure. At any rate, the TrueType versions
are handled at least as well as Type 1.

BTW, this problem with OpenOffice is not limited to FontSite 500 fonts.
And it is a known issue, but apparently not a very high-priority one.

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Haven Rock Press            Horses bear manure through
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books at havenrock.com         When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)