[XeTeX] Finding out if a font supports a particular Unicode character and using it
Peter Baker
psb6m at virginia.edu
Tue Feb 2 13:34:33 CET 2010
Chris Jones wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 01, 2010 at 08:11:25AM EST, Peter Baker wrote:
>
> Hello Peter,
>
> I ran some tests on my debian squeeze system and I did not see much
> difference.
>
>
> Here are the versions I tested with:
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> [04:02:18][/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont]$ fontforge -version
> Copyright (c) 2000-2009 by George Williams.
> Executable based on sources from 23:48 GMT 23-Sep-2009.
> Library based on sources from 17:32 GMT 14-Sep-2009.
> fontforge 20090923
> libfontforge 20090914
> [04:07:06][/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont]$ dpkg -l | grep fontforge
> ii fontforge 0.0.20090923-1 font editor
> ii libfontforge1 0.0.20090923-1 font editor - runtime library
> ii python-fontforge 0.0.20090923-1+b1 font editor - Python bindings
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Test index build with GNU/unifont:
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> [03:22:05][/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont]$ free
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 385172 379952 5220 0 252 9760
> -/+ buffers/cache: 369940 15232
> Swap: 1172704 600960 571744
>
> [03:24:29][/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont]$ fontswith -b -n -V .
> Building or revising index /home/user/.fontswith/fontswith.index
> Building index for 2 fonts
> Examining font ./unifont.ttf
> Examining font
> Couldn't find a font file named /usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/
> is not in a known format (or is so badly corrupted as to be unreadable)
> Could not open
> Elapsed time: 430.119107962
>
> [03:33:00][/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont]$ free
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 385172 54372 330800 0 336 14424
> -/+ buffers/cache: 39612 345560
> Swap: 1172704 159940 1012764
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
> It takes about seven minutes to run on a PIII 650MHz with a 5400rpm HDD which
> is a bit less than I earlier reported.
>
> Test character search:
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> [03:40:07][/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont]$ fontswith aleph
>
> These fonts contain the glyph aleph:
> DejaVuSans: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf
> DejaVuSans-Bold: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf
> DejaVuSans-BoldOblique: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf
> DejaVuSans-Oblique: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf
> DejaVuSansCondensed: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSansCondensed.ttf
> DejaVuSansCondensed-Bold: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSansCondensed-Bold.ttf
> DejaVuSansCondensed-BoldOblique: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSansCondensed-BoldOblique.ttf
> DejaVuSansCondensed-Oblique: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSansCondensed-Oblique.ttf
> FreeMono: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeMono.ttf
> FreeMonoBold: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeMonoBold.ttf
> FreeMonoBoldOblique: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeMonoBoldOblique.ttf
> FreeSerif: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeSerif.ttf
> FreeSerifBold: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeSerifBold.ttf
> Mathematica1Mono: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/mathematica/Mathematica1m.ttf
> Mathematica1Mono-Bold: /usr/share/fonts/truetype/mathematica/Mathematica1mb.ttf
>
> [03:46:07][/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont]$ free
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
> This took about the same time and presumably gives correct results. I was
> expecting the index to be used by default, but apparently it was not and the
> default font tree at /usr/share/fonts was searched.
>
> Interestingly, fontforge did not even look at /usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont.
>
> Test character search with the supposedly corrupt index specified:
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> [04:02:00][/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont]$ fontswith ~/.fontswith/fontswith.index U+05D0
>
> These fonts contain the glyph U+05D0:
> unifont: ./unifont.ttf
>
> [04:02:18][/usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont]$
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
> This only took about 18 seconds and despite the messages to the effect
> that the index was corrupt, the aleph U+05D0 glyps was found.
>
> All attempts to limit memory up to 360 Meg cause fontforge to terminate:
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> [03:22:05][~]$ ulimit -v 360000
> [04:25:17][~]$ fontforge /usr/share/fonts/truetype/
> arphic/ freefont/ latex-xft-fonts/ mathematica/ ttf-dejavu/ unifont/
> [04:25:17][~]$ fontforge /usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont.ttf
> Copyright (c) 2000-2009 by George Williams.
> Executable based on sources from 23:48 GMT 23-Sep-2009.
> Library based on sources from 17:32 GMT 14-Sep-2009.
> Attempt to allocate memory failed.
> Aborted
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I would assume fontswith would fail in the same manner.
>
> This suggests that fontforge somehow needs to allocate a large chunk of
> memory in certain cases: I also tested with the arialuni.ttf font file
> from the msttfcorefont package, which is larger than GNU/unifont, and
> ran into the same problem.
>
> It would appear that for large font files, fontforge needs at least half
> a gig of memory. There may be good reasons for that but it does strike
> me as a bit odd that you would need that much to process somewhere in
> the neighborhood of 20 Meg of input data.
>
> In any case, it looks like there's not much that can be done where
> fontswith is concerned, maybe check with the fontforge developers if
> there is anything that could be done to make it work on legacy hardware.
>
> Lastly, I would like to mention that I install fonts that are not part
> of my distribution in /usr/local/share/fonts.
>
> Is it possible to build a global index that includes all fonts on the
> system?
>
> Thanks,
>
> CJ
>
>
>
I think I've done all I can do. When I open unifont with FF on my old
dell laptop (512MB) with Xubuntu 9.10, it takes some 30 sec. to load.
Sys. Monitor reports it has allocated a heap of 283MB. That's big, but
not crippling. (I can still e.g. run a browser.) I can only guess that
your FF (which seems pretty recent on your "squeeze" system) is built
with different options that somehow make it use memory inefficiently.
If you have more than one directory tree containing fonts, just run
fontswith --bn /usr/local/share/fonts
It will add to the old index rather than create a new one.
I'm going to try to start a thread about this issue on the FF dev list;
I'll report back if I find out anything useful.
Peter
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