[texworks] Mac OS TeXworks + fontconfig

[Charlie Sharpsteen]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 1:46 AM, Stefan Löffler <st.loeffler at gmail.com>wrote:

> **
> 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>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?
>

Don't know, it was just an idea that occurred to me. Maybe I will play
around with it someday. Given that X11 is installed by default on all Macs
(but can be left out through customization of the install) it is unlikely
that the base Fontconfig files will be absent.


>   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").
>

Sounds good to me. I will wait until 0.4.3 to build the next round of Mac
binaries and they will use Fontconfig.

-Charlie
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