[texworks] Poppler fonts

[Stefan Löffler]

Hi,

On 2011-03-30 23:24, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> On 2011-03-30 at 19:57:07 +0100, Jonathan Kew wrote:
>
>  > IMO, it would be preferable to configure poppler (for the Windows
>  > build) so that it uses the standard TrueType Times/Arial/Courier
>  > fonts from the Windows fonts directory. It shouldn't be necessary
>  > to bundle these fonts with the program.

Good point (assuming that the standard TTFs are acceptable regarding
style, metrics, etc.; though I assume they are, since they are already
mentioned in the poppler sources).

> I don't have Windows, hence I can't try myself, but TeXworks's
> poppler-font-handler.patch contains stuff like:
>
> static struct {
>      {"Times-Italic",          "n021023l.pfb", "timesi.ttf"},
>      {"Times-Roman",           "n021003l.pfb", "times.ttf"},
>
> Maybe the TrueType fonts are used as fallback fonts already and
> nothing has to be changed in the code, at least if poppler knows where
> to look for them.
>
> Maybe someone could try under Windows to remove (or rename) the
> "fonts" directory in order to find out whether the TrueType fonts are
> found instead.

I just checked. The only file that seems necessary for proper execution
is d050000l.pfb (ZapfDingbat), since there doesn't seem to be a proper
substitute available (in the poppler sources, wingdings.ttf is
suggested, but according to Jonathan's patch this is wrong).
For all others, the TTFs can be used (and are, if the .pfb files are
absent).
Can somebody shed some light on which other files should be kept
(fonts.*, readmes, ...)?
With your permission, Reinhard, (or that of whoever is relevant for
this), I probably will commit that font directory to the repository with
the relevant TL files if it indeed is just one or two files.

For future reference, I've created a test document (see attachement)
that uses all 14 base fonts without embedding them. I'll probably commit
them to svn under some new testcase folder later.

> If the "fonts" directory is removed and the manual pages are displayed
> though, then obviously nothing has to be changed in the code.

As Paul already pointed out, this whole font business was started by the
missing Zapf Dingbat issue some time ago. So, completely removing the
fonts folder is not an option, as that was added as a result of the
missing font issue. On the other hand, most (all?) of the other fonts
can probably be removed - if they would have been necessary, problems
would almost certainly have occurred much earlier.

> This would be fine because people then can still throw the Type1 fonts
> into the "fonts" directory if they prefer Helvetica to Arial.

Indeed.

HTH
Stefan
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