[Scribus] Linux Font Editor?

[PLinnell]

On Friday 28 October 2005 17:47, John Jordan wrote:
> On 28 Oct 2005, at 11:37, Tobias Hilbricht wrote:
> > Am Freitag, 28. Oktober 2005 10:26 schrieb Tobias Hilbricht:
> > > Am Donnerstag, 27. Oktober 2005 22:48 schrieb John Jordan:
> > > > But I still have a problem. The installation via Synaptic
> > > > went without error, but the fonts do not appear in any
> > > > application's font list.
> > >
> > > If I do as said above, then it works out of the box not only
> > > with TeX, but also with Scribus. Please consult the Ubuntu
> > > manual on installing packages there, but I think it will be the
> > > same there.
> >
> > Just to come back to one of your problems concerning installation
> > of TIPA-fonts: once you have installed the fonts on Ubuntu for
> > use with Scribus for example, then take the tipa-pfbs with the
> > corresponding tipa-afms and copy them together into one directory
> > on your Windows machine. ATM should recognize them, and you can
> > use them there as well.
>
> Synaptic did install it, or so it said. And the pfb and afm files
> are located on the hard drive in usr/share/texm/fonts/Type1/tipa.
> After adding this path to Scribus it now sees and can use the
> fonts. However, they are still not listed in OpenOffice and I can't
> find an equivalent place in OpenOffice to add the path. I thought
> that adding them via Synaptic would just make them available
> system- wide to all programs (like installing them via ATM on
> Windows). But evidently there is something else that I have to do
> to make that work.
>

This is done with spadmin program aka the print manager in OO. 

I had a look at a couple of fonts and these are indeed special. They 
seem to be very carefully made - given they have vastly more kern 
pairs than most fonts. If the .afm files are in the same directory as 
the .pfb files Scribus will read use this for kerning. 

I have added some hints about Kfontinstaller in the docs. It is the 
easiest way to quickly add *and* manage fonts - even easier than any 
kind of packaging. 

Start here: http://docs.scribus.net/index.php?lang=en&page=fonts1

Personally, except for the core X-Windows and Ghostscript fonts, I use 
this method exclusively and manage 200-400 fonts installed and active 
with another 1500+ available for install. No other method I have 
tested works easier or more correctly on Linux to manage fonts - I 
think I have tried them all since RH 7.0 days. 

Fonts used to be a horror show to manage on Linux, but no longer with 
fontconfig + Kfontinstaller. Kfontinstaller cleverly will also create 
Ghostscript Fontmap files so Ghostscript can use them to embed in 
printing and viewing with apps like GSview. 

> It took a while with Konqueror, but I finally managed to copy the
> pfb and afm files to my Windows 2000 computer that has ATM Deluxe
> 4.1 on it. However, ATM still sees no fonts when I point it to the
> folder where the fonts are located. The pfb and afm for each font
> are located in this folder. I opened an afm with Quickview and it
> seems to be just a text file showing data for each character. It
> appears the afm files were created by Ghostview. Evidently there is
> still something odd about these files.

I have not tested this yet, but will be able to soon. .afm files are 
indeed exactly that, a text file. ATM will look for .pfb for the font 
binary info and pfm for printer font metrics. 

> Also, now that I am able to use the fonts in Scribus, I can't
> figure out the system for where the characters are located. I used
> Extras
>
> > Insert special and it popped up a window (sort of like Character
>
> Map). But each font lists only a few characters. I just fiddled
> with it a bit, but so far I haven't found any of the combining
> diacritics (for example). For those not familiar with IPA, these
> are special symbols that you can stick on any character, like
> accents. They are drawn so that they appear one character to the
> left of the actual space where typed - but take up no space on the
> line, so the next character's spacing is correct. In the IPA there
> are a ton of these.
>

Glyph combination is not yet supported 1.3.x. It will never be added 
to 1.2.x

Offering this capability is not a simple task. This function will 
require a complete re-write of some core parts of Scribus. The aim is 
to be able to support this type of functionality for Arabic, Indic 
Script and other complex scripts. Being able to add IPA support 
should not be too difficult. 

I am not familiar with using IPA fonts, but just 5 minutes of playing 
gives me the hint there might be a special keyboard layout for this 
type of output. 

> There has to be a simpler way to insert the characters, or some
> kind of system so I can find the right font. If I have to wade
> through 69 fonts with Insert Special to find the right character
> it's going to be pretty tedious to set type with these fonts. Is
> there
> documentation someplace that would help here?
>
> Thanks for your help so far. :)
> _______________________________________________

That said, the 1.3.x version has a revised Insert Glyph palette and 
easier access via the menu. I could access every glyph in the tipa 
fonts in 1.3.2cvs that was found in fontforge.

If indeed there is some form of special input needed, please visit the 
wiki and outline what exactly is needed to make it work properly in 
Scribus. Links, example text and screen shots are helpful for 
developers.

Hope that helps,

Peter