[XeTeX] where to put woff files

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 5 Apr 2017 10:36:27 -0600 schrieb Bobby de Vos:

> Greetings,
> 
> I have seen reports of problems on XeTeX on Ubuntu not handling woff
> files, both told to me in person and also on the web [1]. I am now
> taking over the Debian/Ubuntu packaging for some fonts (Scheherazade
> included) and wondered where to put woff files, to avoid this problem. I
> could put them in the documentation folder of the package, where some
> sample html and css files could load the woff and display text using the
> woff font.
> 
> I asked this question on the Debian pkg-fonts-devel mailing list, and
> the response [2] contradicted what  Khaled Hosny said in [1]. Khaled's
> position (IIUC) was that the woff files should not be installed where
> fontconfig can find them. Debian pkg-fonts-devel mailing list said to
> file a bug against XeTeX for not validating the results of fontconfig.
> 
> Whose advice should I follow?

On the whole I would agree with the debian answer: applications like
xetex/xdvipdfmx shouldn't try to use fonts it can't handle. 

On windows where fontconfig is used only by xetex I would try to
blacklist the faulty fonts with a <rejectfont>-pattern (I don't know
if it would work for the woff-problem) in the fontconfig
configuration but I don't think that there is an easy way to do
something like this on linux -- all configuration would affect other
application. So imho some other way to blacklist fonts/font types
for xetex/dvipdfmx is needed (luaotfload has a configuration file
for this).

That's the general answer. On the practical side: It can only help
if you can avoid to put the font somewhere where is disturb xetex.
And xetex users shold avoid "vage" font loading by adding the
extension if possible. 



-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/