[texworks] Mac OS TeXworks + fontconfig

Stefan Löffler st.loeffler at gmail.com
Wed Jun 29 10:46:36 CEST 2011


Hi,

On 2011-06-29 01:24, Charlie Sharpsteen wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 6:52 AM, Stefan Löffler <st.loeffler at gmail.com
> <mailto:st.loeffler at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     As for (2), the Quartz approach satisfies this by using system
>     fonts, whereas fontconfig requires X11 fonts (which, however, seem
>     to have become a sort of system fonts in recent OS Xs, anyway; if
>     they don't - or there is a chance users don't have it - we should
>     probably bundle the necessary font files with Tw, just to ensure
>     we don't violate the PDF standard).
>
>  
> Fontconfig appears to use mostly system fonts with one or two X11
> fonts thrown in. If the user does not have X11 installed, the main
> component that is missing are the Fontconfig configuration files that
> tell it where to find things. If we stuck with Fontconfig, a possible
> alternative to bundling the 14 required fonts would be to bundle a
> configuration file that tells Fontconfig where to locate system fonts.

Sounds fine for me. Is there any way to use that only as a fallback if
no system config-files are found?
  
>
>     So, all in all, I see two choices: bundle base-14 fonts (we do
>     this partly for Windows as well), or drop good font substitution.
>
>     I would tend to go with fontconfig here, for reasons of simple
>     usability. But not being a Mac user this is nothing more than a
>     gut feeling.
>     Have I missed something? Jonathan, any thoughts?
>
>
> I'm leaning in the direction of sticking with Fontconfig as well.
> Mainly because although we have good Quartz support for the "base 14
> fonts", they are very English-centric and Fontconfig appears to make
> better fallback and substitution choices for non-English languages. As
> a white boy from Alaska, I feel entirely unqualified to make these
> sorts of decisions :)

Well then, unless someone else has good points to raise, let's settle on
fontconfig for the 0.4 series for now. We can still change our minds
down the road, but fontconfig seems like the most user-friendly way
right now.

> However, I do need to know which library to build 0.4.2 against.

You may want to wait another day or so until 0.4.3 is released (see the
thread on "Problem with autocompletion").

Cheers,
Stefan
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