RE: [XaraXtreme-dev] Substituted fonts and Bug 1057

["Charles Moir" <CharlesM@xxxxxxxx>]

OK input gratefully received. We're going to discuss this at a Xara LX
meeting we have here tomorrow.

There is perhaps some logic in moving towards a CSS like font matching
process.  E.g. this is the CSS of nice website I just came across.

font: 12px/19px "Lucida Sans Unicode", Verdana, Tahoma, Arial,
sans-serif

Incidentally Lucida Unicode is also a font that appears to be bundled
with OSX and XP. I think Apple and MS have got together to provide a
unified set of core fonts. Very nice of them.

Charles


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:owner-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Worth
> Sent: 22 May 2006 21:02
> To: dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] Substituted fonts and Bug 1057
> 
> On Mon, 22 May 2006 21:16:59 +0200, Martin Wuerthner wrote:
> > 
> > I do not think Carl proposed encoding "Serif" or "Sans" in the 
> > document. Rather, having a default font "Sans" that is 
> resolved to a 
> > real existing font (taking the user's own choices into 
> account or by 
> > default, the system-wide font configuration) on the machine 
> where the 
> > document is created. Then, that font name is put in the document.
> 
> Yes, that's the idea.
> 
> Discussion might be easier if we talk about "unresolved font patterns"
> that through some substitution machinery can be mapped to a 
> "resolved font". (In the following I'll sometimes use 
> "pattern" and "font" as shorthands for these two concepts 
> when unambiguous.)
> 
> With that terminology I think it's easier to talk about which 
> of these objects are getting stored rather than talking about 
> whether font substitution is allowed or not in certain 
> situations. For example, the convention might be:
> 
>  * Xara's "default font" should be an unresolved font pattern.
> 
>  * Templates should also be able to provide an unresolved font pattern
>    that will be the default font after the template is loaded.
> 
>  * Any text that has actually been visually laid out by a user and
>    saved into a document should be saved with a resolved font.
> 
> And then the rules for substitution might be as follows. [The 
> details here might be wrong, since I don't actually know how 
> text is saved in Xara documents, but perhaps the outline will 
> still be useful.]
> 
> It's always fine to use font substitution machinery to 
> resolve a pattern to a font. No prompting should be necessary.
> 
> However, if font substitution is necessary for converting 
> from one resolved font to another for display of a document, 
> then the user should perhaps be notified that there's a lack 
> of fidelity in the displayed result. As Alex mentioned, this 
> sort of substitution should not change the resolved font 
> being stored in the data structures, (so that subsequent 
> editing of non-text elements does not change the resolved 
> font emitted into the document on the next save).
> 
> Finally, the case Alex didn't mention is that of trying to 
> edit text that is set in a non-existent font. In this case, 
> it's probably the case that some permanent substitution would 
> have to take place and the user needs a big scary warning 
> about the irreversible change that will occur in the document 
> (or whatever).
> 
> -Carl
>