[XeTeX] \ifFontExists

Jonathan Kew jonathan at jfkew.plus.com
Fri Jan 2 18:29:36 CET 2009


On 2 Jan 2009, at 15:18, Peter Dyballa wrote:

>
> Am 02.01.2009 um 16:00 schrieb Jonathan Kew:
>
>> I don't want the typesetting program silently making font
>> substitution choices for me
>
>
> And therefore you would give away the PDF document instead of its
> source ...

Or both; the PDF for people who simply want to read the document in  
its intended form, and source for those who may want to modify it...  
in which case it will be up to them to determine what fonts they need,  
or adapt the document to their available fonts.

As demonstrated by the "testfontavailability" sample, it is possible  
to write documents that test for the availability of particular fonts,  
and accept any of several alternatives; this can be used to make them  
more "portable", but I wouldn't consider this a normal practice. And  
it's still not the same as fontconfig-style "closest-match"  
substitution (which may not be at all "close" in a typical user's  
view); in this case the author, not the software, decides which fonts  
are acceptable substitutes.

JK



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