[XeTeX] OT: CLI tool to query a font for designer, trademark and other information

[William Adams]

On Apr 19, 2007, at 8:39 AM, Jonathan Kew wrote:

> You could use ftxdumperfuser (from Apple's font tool suite) to dump
> the 'name' table, and find the relevant entry there. Not all that
> different from using ttx, though. (Are you sure fontforge doesn't let
> you view all the names?)

Not from the scripting interface AFAICT. I'd love to be wrong and  
will look again (or, heh, heh, I'll just pester George Williams on  
that list)

>> Failing that, would it be feasible to have XeTeX do so? (say have a
>> command \xetexfontdesigner which queries the font file information
>> and provides the contents of the designer field if present)
>
> No, I don't think I want to clutter XeTeX with commands that aren't
> relevant to the process of actually setting type on paper. In
> principle, there's a *long* list of pieces of information you might
> want from a font -- not just designer, but version info, license,
> copyright, dates, etc, etc. But unless they're somehow relevant to
> actually using the font within XeTeX, I don't think this is the way
> to go. You want a font editor/inspector, not a typesetting tool.

Except that what I want to do is typeset a bunch of font samples  
automatically --- being able to directly place version info from a  
font would be kind of handy for later reference too, but I understand  
that this is a kind of bizarre and really specialized feature.

I'll shelve the idea of doing it automagically for now and just  
handle it manually.

Thanks!

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications



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