Fontconfig - Nov 2005 - fontconfig 2.2.3 only works with iso8859-1

I have a collection of old bitmap fonts (BDF format) that I''d like
to use with fontconfig.  The problem is that the fonts'' glyphs
are replaced with some other system font when CHARSET_REGISTRY
and CHARSET_ENCODING is not equal to "ISO8859" and "1".  I
tried
setting LC_ALL to all sorts of things, but that didn''t have
any effect.  The fonts in question are in IBM codepage 437; in
this particular case, I could just edit the fonts and specify
ISO8859-1, but I don''t understand why I have to lie about the
charset to please fontconfig.

Is this a bug, or can I fix it by editing ~/.fonts.conf or
something like that?  Btw, my OS is Slackware Linux 10.1, which
uses X.org 6.8.1.

-- 
 Haakon

On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 16:19 +0100, Haakon Riiser wrote:
> [Owen Taylor]
> 
> > Haakon Riiser wrote:
> > >I have a collection of old bitmap fonts (BDF format) that
I''d like
> > >to use with fontconfig.  The problem is that the fonts''
glyphs
> > >are replaced with some other system font when CHARSET_REGISTRY
> > >and CHARSET_ENCODING is not equal to "ISO8859" and
"1".  I tried
> > >setting LC_ALL to all sorts of things, but that didn''t
have
> > >any effect.  The fonts in question are in IBM codepage 437; in
> > >this particular case, I could just edit the fonts and specify
> > >ISO8859-1, but I don''t understand why I have to lie about
the
> > >charset to please fontconfig.
> > >
> > >Is this a bug, or can I fix it by editing ~/.fonts.conf or
> > >something like that?  Btw, my OS is Slackware Linux 10.1, which
> > >uses X.org 6.8.1.
> > 
> > Neither a bug nor something you can fix without reencoding the
> > fonts to Unicode (ISO10646-1). fontconfig only supports a couple of 
> > encodings other than Unicode.
> > 
> > The complexity and overhead to support all the encodings that BDF
fonts
> > are found in just doesn''t make sense considering their legacy
> > status.
> 
> Just using the font as if it were ISO10646-1 would be good enough.
> Should''t that be a trivial patch?  It is, at least, much better
than
> the current behavior, which I don''t see any use for.
To this I can only reply:

 Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

If an input stream has a ? in it, then that should come out as a ?
or nothing. It should never come out as a ?. 

Misencoding input text in order to match a misencoded (or
misinterpreted) font is one of the ultimate evils of the font and
text handling world.

Regards,
						Owen

On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 22:22 +0100, Haakon Riiser wrote:
> > Misencoding input text in order to match a misencoded (or
> > misinterpreted) font is one of the ultimate evils of the font
> > and text handling world.
> 
> I don''t see it as a problem, but OK.  Here''s another
idea: how
> about making it possible to define aliases for font encodings in
> fonts.conf?  Then I could tell fontconfig that IBM cp437 is another
> name for ISO8859-1; there would be no side effect for people who
> don''t specifically ask for it, and everyone is happy. :-)
cp-437 and iso-8859-1 are *not* the same. If you don''t care, 
munge your font, just don''t give it to anybody else.

Regards,
						Owen

[Owen Taylor]
> Haakon Riiser wrote:
> >I have a collection of old bitmap fonts (BDF format) that I''d
like
> >to use with fontconfig.  The problem is that the fonts'' glyphs
> >are replaced with some other system font when CHARSET_REGISTRY
> >and CHARSET_ENCODING is not equal to "ISO8859" and
"1".  I tried
> >setting LC_ALL to all sorts of things, but that didn''t have
> >any effect.  The fonts in question are in IBM codepage 437; in
> >this particular case, I could just edit the fonts and specify
> >ISO8859-1, but I don''t understand why I have to lie about the
> >charset to please fontconfig.
> >
> >Is this a bug, or can I fix it by editing ~/.fonts.conf or
> >something like that?  Btw, my OS is Slackware Linux 10.1, which
> >uses X.org 6.8.1.
> 
> Neither a bug nor something you can fix without reencoding the
> fonts to Unicode (ISO10646-1). fontconfig only supports a couple of 
> encodings other than Unicode.
> 
> The complexity and overhead to support all the encodings that BDF fonts
> are found in just doesn''t make sense considering their legacy
> status.
Just using the font as if it were ISO10646-1 would be good enough.
Should''t that be a trivial patch?  It is, at least, much better than
the current behavior, which I don''t see any use for.

-- 
 Haakon

[Owen Taylor]
> On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 16:19 +0100, Haakon Riiser wrote:
>> Just using the font as if it were ISO10646-1 would be good
>> enough.  Should''t that be a trivial patch?  It is, at least,
>> much better than the current behavior, which I don''t see any
>> use for.
> To this I can only reply:
>
>  Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
>
> If an input stream has a ? in it, then that should come out as
> a ? or nothing. It should never come out as a ???.
>
> Misencoding input text in order to match a misencoded (or
> misinterpreted) font is one of the ultimate evils of the font
> and text handling world.
I don''t see it as a problem, but OK.  Here''s another idea: how
about making it possible to define aliases for font encodings in
fonts.conf?  Then I could tell fontconfig that IBM cp437 is another
name for ISO8859-1; there would be no side effect for people who
don''t specifically ask for it, and everyone is happy. :-)

-- 
 Haakon

Around 22 o''clock on Feb 25, Haakon Riiser wrote:
> I don''t see it as a problem, but OK.  Here''s another
idea: how
> about making it possible to define aliases for font encodings in
> fonts.conf? 
Transcoding BDF fonts is not rocket science; if you want fontconfig to 
know what codepoints are covered by a font, you''ll just need to present
it
with some way to get correct Unicode encoding tables for the font.  

The problem here is not in fontconfig, but (maybe) Freetype which is 
missing any kind of support for non-Unicode (or Latin-1) encodings for BDF 
fonts.

As BDF fonts have so many other troubles, it''s not exactly encouraging 
anyone to go try to fix this; I''m pushing to eliminate BDF/PCF fonts
and
replace them with bitmap glyphs encoded in true type files (SFNT), which 
seems better in all ways to me.

-keith


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> I have a collection of old bitmap fonts (BDF format) that I''d like
> to use with fontconfig.  The problem is that the fonts'' glyphs
> are replaced with some other system font when CHARSET_REGISTRY
> and CHARSET_ENCODING is not equal to "ISO8859" and "1".
Here''s what happens when I view the font with gnome-font-viewer:

  ISO8859-1:
  http://folk.uio.no/hakonrk/tmp/bdf-iso8859-1.png

  Any other encoding (ISO8859-2 was used in this example):
  http://folk.uio.no/hakonrk/tmp/bdf-iso8859-2.png

-- 
 Haakon

Haakon Riiser wrote:
> I have a collection of old bitmap fonts (BDF format) that I''d like
> to use with fontconfig.  The problem is that the fonts'' glyphs
> are replaced with some other system font when CHARSET_REGISTRY
> and CHARSET_ENCODING is not equal to "ISO8859" and "1".
I tried
> setting LC_ALL to all sorts of things, but that didn''t have
> any effect.  The fonts in question are in IBM codepage 437; in
> this particular case, I could just edit the fonts and specify
> ISO8859-1, but I don''t understand why I have to lie about the
> charset to please fontconfig.
> 
> Is this a bug, or can I fix it by editing ~/.fonts.conf or
> something like that?  Btw, my OS is Slackware Linux 10.1, which
> uses X.org 6.8.1.
Neither a bug nor something you can fix without reencoding the
fonts to Unicode (ISO10646-1). fontconfig only supports a couple of 
encodings other than Unicode.

The complexity and overhead to support all the encodings that BDF fonts
are found in just doesn''t make sense considering their legacy
status.

Regards,
					Owen

Around 21 o''clock on Feb 28, Dmitry Karasik wrote:
> Please don''t, at least for iso-8859-1 and iso-10646-1 encodings. I
see
> where the new font layout would shine brighter, but probably it''s
better to not
> fix what ain''t broken?
For 10646, PCF is a really bad idea -- it uses an uncompressed array for 
the codepoint->glyph mapping table, which means you cannot spread glyphs 
across the unicode range without exploding file sizes.

Even for Latin-1, using TTF is a win as we can ship all of the bitmap 
sizes in a single file, saving significant space and effort.

Fewer files, less disk space, better i18n support, better performance.
There is no downside here, only a bit of code to ensure all of the 
legacy XLFD properties are translated appropriately.

-keith


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Keith> As BDF fonts have so many other troubles, it''s not exactly
 Keith> encouraging anyone to go try to fix this; I''m pushing to
eliminate
 Keith> BDF/PCF fonts and replace them with bitmap glyphs encoded in true
 Keith> type files (SFNT), which seems better in all ways to me.

Please don''t, at least for iso-8859-1 and iso-10646-1 encodings. I see
where the new font layout would shine brighter, but probably it''s
better to not
fix what ain''t broken?

-- 
Sincerely,
	Dmitry Karasik

Hi Keith!

On 28 Feb 05 at 22:02, "Keith" (Keith Packard) wrote:

 Keith> --==_Exmh_41322760P Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8


 Keith> Around 21 o''clock on Feb 28, Dmitry Karasik wrote:

 >> Please don''t, at least for iso-8859-1 and iso-10646-1
encodings. I see
 >> where the new font layout would shine brighter, but probably
it''s
 >> better to not fix what ain''t broken?

 Keith> For 10646, PCF is a really bad idea -- it uses an uncompressed
 Keith> array for the codepoint->glyph mapping table, which means you
 Keith> cannot spread glyphs across the unicode range without exploding
 Keith> file sizes.

 Keith> Even for Latin-1, using TTF is a win as we can ship all of the
 Keith> bitmap sizes in a single file, saving significant space and effort.

Wait, when you used word ''eliminate'' in the previous message
does that
mean that PCF/BDF fonts simply wouldn''t be shipped in the future, or, 
in the contrary, wouldn''t be recognized any longer? I thought that it 
is the latter, because I''ve had at least one problem with newer
fontconfig,
when it displayed first 128 glyphs only out of my non-latin PCF files. 
If it is just about shipping, well, the request is cancelled.

-- 
Sincerely,
	Dmitry Karasik

Around 23 o''clock on Feb 28, Dmitry Karasik wrote:
> Wait, when you used word ''eliminate'' in the previous
message does that
> mean that PCF/BDF fonts simply wouldn''t be shipped in the future,
or,
> in the contrary, wouldn''t be recognized any longer?
Just that we''d take the existing BDF fonts and convert them to TTF
wrapped
bitmaps and then discarding the BDF files.  With that done, we won''t
ever
need to ''compile'' the fonts again.  The piece missing here is
an
application that takes a single TTF file and generates the dozens of BDF 
files it represents so that we can still get BDF files when needed, and so 
we can validate that the conversion process is at least round-trippable.

I doubt the FreeType project is planning on discarding BDF/PCF support, 
but I also doubt they''re planning on making it work a whole lot better 
than it does today, and it''s pretty minimal at present (not supporting 
anything other than Latin-1 and Unicode encoded fonts).

-keith


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