Re: xfree fonts

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh sharif edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> 
> >  1. Do you know if XFree86 is going to play games and strip out
> >     the much needed Form-B glyphs upon installation ?  If so, can
> >     we convince them not to do that (we tried once before and I
> >     don't know what came of it, but we didn't succeed :-)
> 
> That's not XFree86, but Markus Kuhn himself that's stripping those. I have 
> also tried that to no success. It's not efficient he says, and that's all.
> He is trying to invent a new BDF mechanism to support sparse fonts, and he 
> has told me he will post his thoughts to the fonts at xfree86 mailing list 
> once he finishes that. That's all I know.

Yeah, that sounds about right :-)  This is a very crucial point for all of
us Presentation Form-B users, without their native inclusion - we'll always
play catchup and do-this-do-that to get things working.  We need to keep 
pressuring Mr. Kuhn about this for him to understand its importance to our
communities and not let up - we want inclusion from the get-go.

> >  2. In the fonts noted in the links above - 3 have form-B glyphs.
> >     10x20, 9x15 and 9x15B -- but the later two have problems.
> >     I don't have time right now to investigate the missing glyph(s),
> >     but there is definitely at least one that's not there as it
> >     relates to arabic.
> >     Try to use those fonts to view the fakkir.net/~nadim/ar_utf8
> >     file (there for a limited time :-) and note how the Alef in
> >     Allah is not properly displayed (there are others in the file
> >     as you scroll down I believe) - the 10x20 font is fine.
> 
> There are many many Arabic-related problems in 9x15 and 9x15B, it's
> incomplete, it's ugly, .... They are drawn by a German I guess. I never
> found the time to went through them and fix the glyphs, I only did that
> for 10x20 which I used more frequently on machine.
> 
> Any volunteers for that? This involves redrawing a bitmap font with a very 
> good bitmap font editor called xmbdfed.

Do you have a list of things that need to be done with regard to those
two fonts -- they seem 90% there.  We had a couple of people that have
in the past shown interest in font creation - maybe with a list in hand
with regard to what needs to be done, we could finally give them direction
and know what to expect :-)

Thanks for all your help and replies.

Salam.

 - Nadim


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