Fontconfig - Nov 2005 - Font styles and familes - match and replace?

On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 19:38 -0400, Ambrose Li wrote:
> 
> No. There is absolutely no way to fix this problem because this
> is a design decision in fontconfig.
> 
> In fact this annoying (and IMHO very serious) usability problem
> had been brought up before (a very common problem with the free
> Chinese fonts as well as random commercial fonts).  I (and
> IIRC some others) tried to convince people on this list that
> fontconfig *must* provide a way to describe things like "the
> bold font of font X is font Y".  Unfortunately, it was thought
> that this could be a "trademark problem".
Ouch. The only way I could see it being a Trademark problem would be if
fontconfig shipped with a configuration matching different font families
together in this way, but I''m not a lawyer.

I suppose I can modify the fonts themselves - but some fonts
specifically prohibit this.

LaTeX can do this just via virtual fonts.

Elsner+Flake is a pretty big foundry, since they intentionally are
packaging fonts this way - a lot of applications are going to be more
difficult to use unless the application itself is able to figure it out.
> 
> For CJK, this problem is so bad that bold and italic absolutely
> do not work on fontconfig-based systems.  (For English at least
> many of the default fonts have bold and italic versions fontconfig
> can recognize.)  If you use an application or web site that uses
> boldness or italicness to show you important information, you are
> lost if you don''t speak European languages.
I personally only speak one language (I''d actually like to learn Korean
at some point), but yes - that sounds like a very serious problem to me.

On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 18:44 -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> 
> I suppose I can modify the fonts themselves - but some fonts
> specifically prohibit this.
That seems to work.
I had to convert them to sfd (fontforge cli) first because I do not know
what needs to be modified in the actual file, but then I run perl on the
sfd to search and replace and call fontforge to convert the sfd. I''m
hoping that doesn''t break anything, I know nothing about fontforge.

On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 20:19 +0900, mpsuzuki@hiroshima-u.ac.jp wrote:
> Please let me know detail of "trademark problem".
The issue is that we cannot use trademarked names inappropriately. An
obvious requirement of trademark law is that we cannot present the name
''Times New Roman'' when refering to Timmons. Similarly, we
cannot
represent the name ''Times New Roman Bold'' if we have only
''Times New
Roman'' and are synthesizing the bold variant with software.

Because of these trademark issues, fontconfig simply doesn''t permit the
*listing* of such aliases. It certainly does allow the substitution when
such names are directly requested, so applications which ask for ''Times
New Roman Bold'' can get a synthetic bold face.

You can use this substitution mechanism to replace one family for
another when certain styles are requested. The only thing you cannot do
is provide that information through the font listing API; that API is
limited to presenting only information extracted directly from the font
files themselves.

-keith

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On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 06:19:47AM -0700, Michael A. Peters
wrote:
> The family has 22 styles - [...] All claim to be regular face
> within their family.
[...]
> Is there a way to set up matching so that when I ask for bold
> attribute in the standard face by selecting "Bold" button, it
> gets it from Wastrel Bold?
No. There is absolutely no way to fix this problem because this
is a design decision in fontconfig.

In fact this annoying (and IMHO very serious) usability problem
had been brought up before (a very common problem with the free
Chinese fonts as well as random commercial fonts).  I (and
IIRC some others) tried to convince people on this list that
fontconfig *must* provide a way to describe things like "the
bold font of font X is font Y".  Unfortunately, it was thought
that this could be a "trademark problem".

I could not and still cannot understand this. From my "user''s
viewpoint", fontconfig is less capable than the long-obsolete
"WordPerfect 5.0 for DOS" that was released more than 15 years
ago.

For CJK, this problem is so bad that bold and italic absolutely
do not work on fontconfig-based systems.  (For English at least
many of the default fonts have bold and italic versions fontconfig
can recognize.)  If you use an application or web site that uses
boldness or italicness to show you important information, you are
lost if you don''t speak European languages.


-- 
Ambrose LI Cheuk-Wing  <a.c.li@ieee.org>

http://ada.dhs.org/~acli/

Hi, I''m one of the CJK speakers.

On Thu, 6 Oct 2005 19:38:18 -0400
Ambrose Li <acli@ada.dhs.org> wrote:
>On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 06:19:47AM -0700, Michael A. Peters
>wrote:
>> Is there a way to set up matching so that when I ask for bold
>> attribute in the standard face by selecting "Bold" button, it
>> gets it from Wastrel Bold?
>
>No. There is absolutely no way to fix this problem because this
>is a design decision in fontconfig.
>
>In fact this annoying (and IMHO very serious) usability problem
>had been brought up before (a very common problem with the free
>Chinese fonts as well as random commercial fonts).  I (and
>IIRC some others) tried to convince people on this list that
>fontconfig *must* provide a way to describe things like "the
>bold font of font X is font Y".  Unfortunately, it was thought
>that this could be a "trademark problem".
Please let me know detail of "trademark problem".
Michael took it as legal issue, but I''m afraid you meant different.
I don''t think it''s less-problematic to distribute information
"about" commercial fonts, if they don''t have non-public part
of
the commercial fonts. I suppose what you meant was comprehensive
research for existing commercial font is difficult work.
If I''m misunderstanding, please correct.

Regards,
mpsuzuki

Hi

I should retract my statement about italics not working, as it
sort of works (slanted type synthesized) and most people would
say it works; though you would know that it does not really
work if you know what "italics" really means in typography.

On Fri, Oct 07, 2005 at 08:19:38PM +0900, mpsuzuki@hiroshima-u.ac.jp
wrote:
> 
> Please let me know detail of "trademark problem".
> Michael took it as legal issue, but I''m afraid you meant
different.
> I don''t think it''s less-problematic to distribute
information
> "about" commercial fonts, if they don''t have non-public
part of
> the commercial fonts. I suppose what you meant was comprehensive
> research for existing commercial font is difficult work.
> If I''m misunderstanding, please correct.
As I understood it it is indeed "legal", or rather possibility to
being sued. (I would say abuse of the legal system by commercial
companies.) The response I got was:
>From fontconfig-bounces@lists.freedesktop.org Mon Mar  7 13:27:08 2005
>
>Around 13 o''clock on Mar 7, Ambrose Li wrote:
>
>> I have been wondering whether someone has entertained the idea
>> that fontconfig (or some other layer) can have a config file
>> that specifies something like "the italic version of this
>> font is that font" or "the bold version of this font is that
>> font", or, "to get CJK/Cyrillic/Hebrew/Arabic characters from
>> this font, use that font".
>
>You can do this when matching fonts, but you can''t change what
names are
>returned for each font.  I''ve avoided this strenuously because of 
>trademark issues; font vendors get very nervous when you talk about 
>representing their fonts with different names.
>
>-keith

It seems that a common trend (new or not I don''t know) is to release
fonts in the same family with unique family names.

Just bought a family called Wastrel that imho is a much nicer font than
Comic Sans MS for viewing websites that want a sans script font.

The family has 22 styles - all individually named. I quickly removed the
fonts I am unlikely to use (ie Expanded Outline Oblique ) and just
installed the common four (regular, bold, oblique, bold oblique). All
claim to be regular face within their family.

Fire up AbiWord. Hitting the "bold" button does nothing, I have to
choose Wastrel Bold to get Bold. Hitting Italic results in fake italic,
not the real oblique.

Is there a way to set up matching so that when I ask for bold attribute
in the standard face by selecting "Bold" button, it gets it from
Wastrel
Bold?

I tried the following:

<match target="pattern">
  <test qual="any" name="family">
    <string>Wastrel</string>     
  </test>
  <match target="pattern">
  <test qual="any" name="style">
    <string>Bold</string>
  </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="assign">
      <string>Wastrel Bold</string>
    </edit>
    <edit name="style" mode="assign">
      <string>Normal</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
</match>

Doesn''t seem to cut it. I''m not a fontconfig expert though,
typically I
only touch my ~/.font.config file to make an alias. Any suggestions?

It''s not a big deal, but I''d like to get bold when I press the
bold
button - and not have to select the bold font from the menu to get bold.

-=-
I also just bought LucidaMonoEFOP family.
It does the same thing - four families

LucidaMonoEFOP-Regular
LucidaMonoEFOP-Bold

etc. as the family names.

The documentation that it came with stated to choose the style by
selecting the individual font - and that they are doing that for
"compatibility" reasons.

-=- (from their doc)
"To guarantee compatibility on both Mac and PC platforms, this font was
manufactured as ?Single Font?. The choice of the font must be made via
the ?Font Menu?. If you choose a style like Italic or Bold through the
?Style? Menu, you will get an electronic modification instead of a true
design."
-=-

I don''t know what compatibility issues they speak of ... but anyway, it
seems that they (Elsner+Flake) have made a design decision that all or
most (at least OpenType) fonts will be done this way.

With the new conf.d/ structure, when I make my rpms for my fonts - it
would be nice to include a file that allows bold/oblique/bold-oblique to
be used when the normal/roman face is selected and a style button is
selected. It would be really nice to also be able to then hide those
other styles from the menu but I''ll settle for just being able to bold
something by typing Ctrl-B like I can with many fonts.

Thanks for suggestions.