Re: [dev] freetype2/fc pain

From: Eon S. Jeon <esjeon_AT_hyunmu.am>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2018 21:22:14 +0600

> On 24 Sep 2018, at 17:27, Manu Raster <manu.raster_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hiltjo Posthuma <hiltjo_AT_codemadness.org> writes:
>
>>>>> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 09:15:55AM +0200, Silvan Jegen wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 8:32 AM Eric Pruitt <eric.pruitt_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sun, Sep 23, 2018 at 11:19:46PM -0700, AR Garbe wrote:
>>>>>> On 23 September 2018 at 11:56, Eric Pruitt <eric.pruitt_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> It's not just about Emoji or anti-aliasing. If you work with languages
>>>>>> that use non-Latin characters, support for fallback fonts is a must.
>>>>>
>>>>> Well, are you using st with glyphs that require fallback fonts?
>>>>> I wonder if at suckless we should aim for the general purpose.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, st's fallback font support is the main reason I began to use it. I
>>>> use st and dwm with Japanese and Chinese text almost every single day.
>>>
>>> Just chiming in to say that I am using st with Japanese/Chinese fonts every
>>> day as well.
>>>
>>> I don't think we should throw out support for a feature that more than a billion
>>> people on the planet rely on. That doesn't mean that we can't rethink how we
>>> go about supporting that feature though.
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Silvan
>>
>> I agree its useful. (Complex) fall-back font support has been on my mind also.
>> An idea could be of instead of supporting fallback fonts we could write some
>> font merge script (pre-runtime).
>
> Very good! That's where the problem should be addressed. Solving font
> problems pre-runtime at font-file level saves many lines of code.
>
> Normally, in non-asian setups only a fraction of the glyphs beyond
> ascii are used at a time and those few can easily be merged in
> pre-runtime if not already present e.g. some emojis.

Hello, Manu.

Sorry, but merging font is not a good option.

Each font contains settings like height, padding and hinting parameters, which are optimized for its glyphs by designers. So, merging fonts (or importing glyphs from other fonts) likely to cause character misalignment and hinting problems, especially when merging fonts of different languages.

Fontforge might do the trick, but it takes skills to roll that monster, and hinting is still difficult to customize AFAIK.


Cheers,
Eon
Received on Mon Sep 24 2018 - 17:22:14 CEST