Re: TrueType font naming scheme

[Rebecca and Rowland <rebecca@astrid.u-net.com>]

At 9:29 am -0400 19/8/98, Berthold K.P. Horn wrote:
>Hi:
>
>At 11:16 PM 98/08/18 +0100, Rebecca and Rowland wrote:
>
>>>If your TeX system makes it possible to use TTF fonts in on screen display
>>>then it should allow you to write out TFM files for them.  It has access to
>>>the metric information from the OS.
>>[snip]
>
>>So why tell me about it?
>
>Because you asked about metrics for TTF.

Did I?

>>How about telling Andrew Treverrow he's written OzTeX wrongly?
>
>Or rather he hasn't got around to dealing with metrics yet.

It's not on the list of things to do in OzTeX; I suspect he's not even
considering the matter.

>>Could it be that OzTeX doesn't have access to this metric information
>directly?
>
>How could it not?

See below.  Note that Blue Sky Research has produced a utility program to
extract metric information from Truetype founts; this is separate from
Textures proper (and produces metrics files that pltotf has always choked
on when I've tried them).

>>I for one have no idea how to use Truetype founts
>>with a Mac application; I suspect you're as ignorant about this as I am.
>
>I can't judge that, not knowing the depth of your ignorance :-)
>
>>>From what little I recall from Mac programming, I think that Mac
>>applications do not usually go anywhere near metric information directly.
>
>Of course they do.  How do you think DTP applications figure out where to
>place text on screen, where to break lines, what kerning pairs to use?

One solution is to tell the OS to position text (that fount, that style,
that size) on a line of those dimensions; when the OS has finished doing
the job, use the results.  In other words, there's no fundamental reason
for the application program to need direct access to the metrics.

Rowland.