[Fontinst] Re: [Omega] OpenType and unix/linux and tex

[Yannis Haralambous]

>One question for font experts: If I have a font in opentype format from
>Adobe, can I use it with TeX? I.E:

Very good question, and I have some very good answers:

Currently two students of mine are working on integration of OpenType
(and TrueType) fonts into Omega. The first one has already enhanced
odvips so that I can read a special kind of tables and produce (partial)
type 1 fonts in the PS code.

Our plan is the following:

(1) of the odvips level
when the user asks for a True/OpenType font to be used, a script called
makepfc
creates a file called PFC, which contains CharString glyph descriptions
of all glyphs in that font and stores that file on disk. Then odvips
takes the CharStrings it needs from that file and creates mini-type 1
fonts which are included in the PostScript output.

The PFC file has a TrueType file structure with tables. Another solution
for the user is to "enhance" his/her TrueType/OpenType font by adding
these tables to the font itself. In fact odvips looks first into the
True/OpenType file to see if the tables are present. If yes, then no PFC
file is created/sought.

(2) on the omega level
in the next few months my other student will work on the direct use of
OpenType fonts by omega. We have to investigate where and how the metric
information of TFM/OFM files can be included, and inversely how to obtain
as much information as possible from standard OpenType fonts.

The most interesting part will be how to use BASE, GPOS and GSUB tables
with omega (by converting them into OTPs or micro-engines, etc.).

Once these two steps are done, we only need to convert existing type 1 CM
and omega serif fonts into OpenType (with extra tables so that no
information is lost) and we will have an omega system without the need of
TFM/OFM/VF/OVF anymore.

BTW, I hope to see you all at EuroTeX 2003 where these issues (and much
more) will be thoroughly discussed : <http://omega.enstb.org/eurotex2003>

cheers

======Norbert Preining dixit:

>Hi!
>
>One question for font experts: If I have a font in opentype format from
>Adobe, can I use it with TeX? I.E:
>* Can I convert them to type1?
>* Can I use them directly?
>* Can I use them with fontinst directly or via type1 export?
>* Can I access all the included glyphs (old style figures, sc, ...)
>
>Thanks a lot and best wishes
>
>Norbert
>
>-------------------------------------
>------------------------------------------
>Norbert Preining <preining AT logic DOT at>         Technische
>Universität Wien
>gpg DSA: 0x09C5B094      fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF
>4AA3 09C5 B094
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Yannis Haralambous, Ph.D.      yannis.haralambous at enst-bretagne.fr |
| Professor                            http://omega.enstb.org/yannis |
|                                          Tel. +33 (0)2.29.00.14.27 |
|                                          Fax  +33 (0)2.29.00.12.82 |
| Computer Science Department                                        |
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