[XeTeX] \ifFontExists

Jonathan Kew jonathan at jfkew.plus.com
Fri Jan 2 16:00:23 CET 2009


On 2 Jan 2009, at 14:36, Peter Dyballa wrote:

>
> Am 02.01.2009 um 15:04 schrieb Arno Trautmann:
>
>> Isn’t ”slow“ better than ”not at all“?…
>
>
> No. You have means outside XeTeX to test whether some font exists (at
> least in your system). What seems to be more missing is that XeTeX
> accepts from the operating system's font service a font that only
> matches closely the one requested. This would give more freedom,
> freeing us from finding fonts, which would exist on all targeted
> platforms.

But how would we define "matches closely"? How do you measure the  
"closeness" of fonts, and how do you decide what is "close enough" to  
meet the needs of a typesetting job? And what if the operating system  
doesn't have a font that is "close enough", by whatever measure of  
distance we use?

IMO, this kind of "approximate" font matching is useful and  
appropriate for some situations, such as a web browser that has to  
display arbitrary web pages that may request fonts that aren't  
available on the user's system. But it's not appropriate for a  
professional typesetting system. As a typesetter, I expect the tool to  
give me precisely the font I request, and no other. If I request a  
font that I don't have available, I expect to be told that there's a  
problem, and I expect to decide for myself how to resolve it; I don't  
want the typesetting program silently making font substitution choices  
for me.

JK



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