It is a good thing that GRASS has a set of fonts that can be guaranteed to be present, regardless of the system. These are the venerable stroke fonts. But these fonts are ugly and hard to read. Romans just doesn’t stand out well in a scale or legend, for example, unless against a white background and even then it is not clear at a distance for presentations.
So here is a question. Can GRASS ship with a better set of fonts? Can it come with a minimal TrueType set, for example, that could be guaranteed present regardless of the system? Or is this technically not realistically feasible?
Michael
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University
phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton
Michael Barton wrote:
It is a good thing that GRASS has a set of fonts that can be guaranteed to
be present, regardless of the system. These are the venerable stroke fonts.
But these fonts are ugly and hard to read. Romans just doesn¹t stand out
well in a scale or legend, for example, unless against a white background
and even then it is not clear at a distance for presentations.
So here is a question. Can GRASS ship with a better set of fonts? Can it
come with a minimal TrueType set, for example, that could be guaranteed
present regardless of the system? Or is this technically not realistically
feasible?
Support for TrueType fonts requires the FreeType library, which is
currently an optional dependency.
That aside, most people will already have the Luxi font from the X.org
packages.
--
Glynn Clements <glynn@gclements.plus.com>
There are some Free/Libre TT fonts out there, of which the most
remarkable is Bitstream Vera. Any of those could be distributed within
GRASS. That would cover the FreeType lib case. One of the lucidas may
be all right as X or t1.
Is stroke font the minimal font support in GRASS? Anything default
between stroke and TT?
Daniel.
On 4/29/07, Glynn Clements <glynn@gclements.plus.com> wrote:
Michael Barton wrote:
> It is a good thing that GRASS has a set of fonts that can be guaranteed to
> be present, regardless of the system. These are the venerable stroke fonts.
> But these fonts are ugly and hard to read. Romans just doesn¹t stand out
> well in a scale or legend, for example, unless against a white background
> and even then it is not clear at a distance for presentations.
>
> So here is a question. Can GRASS ship with a better set of fonts? Can it
> come with a minimal TrueType set, for example, that could be guaranteed
> present regardless of the system? Or is this technically not realistically
> feasible?
Support for TrueType fonts requires the FreeType library, which is
currently an optional dependency.
That aside, most people will already have the Luxi font from the X.org
packages.
--
Glynn Clements <glynn@gclements.plus.com>
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--
-- Daniel Calvelo Aros
Daniel Calvelo wrote:
There are some Free/Libre TT fonts out there, of which the most
remarkable is Bitstream Vera. Any of those could be distributed within
GRASS. That would cover the FreeType lib case. One of the lucidas may
be all right as X or t1.
I don't think that we should be bundling fonts which most users will
already have (Luxi and Vera are both pretty common).
Is stroke font the minimal font support in GRASS? Anything default
between stroke and TT?
The default font is the "romans" stroke font. The stroke fonts will
always be available; TrueType fonts can only be used if GRASS was
built with FreeType support.
--
Glynn Clements <glynn@gclements.plus.com>