[Scribus] Broken fonts and FontSample script

[Martin Costabel]

Carol Kankelborg wrote:
> I ran the FontSample script and got a list of 29 fonts that are
> "broken, discarding it." Some live in /Library/Fonts and some
> live in /sw/lib/X11/applettf. Some of the fonts it says were broken
> appeared in the output document FontSample created.

I can't really help (I don't know anything about how scribus decides 
whether a font is broken), I just want to say that none of the fonts you 
mention are flagged as broken on my Mac OSX 10.3 system and neither on 
another version of Mac OSX I am not allowed to talk about ;-). I had two 
fonts systematically in that category, namely NISC18030.ttf and 
Taipei.ttf, so they are now eliminated from the applesystemfonts package 
on 10.3. On 10.2, there is one, GujaratiMT.ttf, that is mentioned as 
broken right at the start up of scribus, but others, including some you 
mention, show up in the Font Preview panel correctly and are only 
discarded when one tries to use them in a text box.

> I have applesystemfonts, msttcorefonts, and ghostscript-fonts installed
> via fink. I pointed scribus to all three directories to add those fonts.
> (Are there any other font packages worth installing? I see gimp-freefonts
> and gimp-sharefonts in the fink list.)

The latter two are likely to contain really broken fonts.

> How do I fix or get rid of these fonts? I also don't want the applettf
> bad fonts showing up again after I update it to a new version. Most of
> the fonts in /Library I've never used (AlBayan.ttf, Geeza.ttf, etc.). I
> probably wouldn't miss them. The ones in applettf I
> have (Copperplate.ttf, MarkerFeltThin.ttf, etc.).

All of the 4 fonts you mention are working nicely with scribus for me on 
OSX 10.3.

> The whole font thing is a big mystery to me, but I'd like to get my
> X11 apps (Scribus, OpenOffice, and Gimp) and, ideally, my Mac OS X
> apps all working with the same fonts and having all the fonts work.
> That may be a pipe dream, but at a minimum I'd like each app to
> only see fonts it can use.

Since you are working a lot with scribus, it might be worth while to 
ditch the applesystemfonts package and create your own directory of 
confirmed fonts, using the techniques of the applesystemfonts package. I 
think if you look at the applesystemfonts.info file, you see that this 
is not too complicated, using the tools that are already installed. 
Basically you would create symbolic links to the fonts that already 
exist in ttf format, run fondu on the others to produce ttf files, run 
mkfontscale and mkfontdir in the directory, and use xfontpath to make it 
known to X11. Scribus will then see these fonts automatically.

-- 
Martin