[Scribus] Newbie font-question

[Peter Linnell]

On Mon, 2003-08-18 at 12:44, Ralf H?ling wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 17.08.03, um 21:05 Uhr (Europe/Berlin) schrieb Peter 
> Linnell:
> 
> >
> > However, many TT fonts migrated from Windows are installed with upper
> > case names and/or extensions i.e. .TTF  Bad.  If so, Scribus will
> > sometimes not find them. If not rename them to lower case and rebuild
> > fonts.scale and fonts.dir - in that order with ttfmkdir.
> 
> You're kidding? You mean I have to rename all my fonts? I think I have
> never had a font with lower case names.

This is where OSX meets old X11 and they do not work quite the same
way.. lower case font names are pretty standard in Linux and IIRC
Solaris. 
> >
> > Other hints: Avoid duplicate fonts in both the X font directories and
> > other user-land directories, like the ones enabled in KDE etc. If you
> > use KDE open the startkde script to see how it works. I personally
> > disable it upon installing an updated KDE.
> I don't use kde, I use MacOSX 10.2.6 and X11 from Apple and fink.

Did not know that. But, this advice applies to Linux users. 
> >
> > With the latest versions of KDE 3.1.1+, I have found the Kfontinstaller
> I think this is not available for MacOSX.

True. One of the big complaints about OSX when it was released vs. MacOS
8/9 was font management. I do not know if it has improved. 
> >
> > Scribus is necessarily quite particular about how your fonts are
> > installed and configured. Not a bug - a feature IMNSHO.
> I think there was someone with the name of Bill who also told people
> the same about his software ;-)

No it is true. Less to do with OSX, than the general mess of fonts in
Xfree86 on Linux.

> > In the DTP world
> > crappy broken fonts or poor installation cause lots of problems.
> I work with my fonts on Mac for over ten years without any problem
>   and now they shall be crappy?

Nope. Just remember Scribus can only use Type1 and True Type fonts. Open
Type font support is in the works. As above, the standard fonts in
Xfree86 on Linux are not the best for DTP. With a Mac, this is far far
less of a problem. 

X11 and thus Scribus depends on the fonts.scale and fonts.dir in each
font directory to be perfect or not all the fonts will show. 
> >
> > Even good high quality fonts from Adobe and Bitstream can act up in
> > postscript.
> And why do the same fonts work without problem creating pdfs on MacOSX?
> 
> Thank you for your help, but I think Scribus is too difficult for me up 
> to now.
> 

I think it is important to keep in mind a few things. 

1. While we really do appreciate the folks who have done the porting
work for Scribus, none of the main developers runs or test OSX on their
own. 

2. the X11 from Apple is a bit different and has been modified to work
with OSX, so incompatibilites will show up in complex apps like Scribus.

3. We cannot fix things if we do not have hints were the problems lie
and how they might be fixed.

HTH,
Peter