Re: What's the prerenderer do?

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Tue, 05 Mar 2002, Akira TAGOH wrote:
>>>>>> On 04 Mar 2002 13:33:38 -0600,
>>>>>> "LC" == Lars Clausen <lrclause@cs.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> 
> LC> If I understand you correctly, there are no Japanese fonts we could
> LC> expect every Japanese user and printer to have installed.  What does
> LC> AbiWord do?  It doesn't seem to do anything special when I run it
> LC> with LC_ALL=ja_JP (works with da_DK).
> 
> current abiword has no font file for Japanese, but debian
> package has it. but that is not my point.
> ok, please look at this PS file:
> http://www.gnome.gr.jp/~tagoh/abiword/abiword.ps
> 
> This file is output by abiword. it's nowhere specified
> Japanese PS font name. there is just an encrypted font
> only.

The embedded font is Nimbus-Roman, so on my system, which doesn't have
KochiMincho installed, that file doesn't display correctly.  Can you, using
the newest CVS version of Dia, get portable Japanese PS files?

> LC> I'm mostly thinking of the fonts that are mentioned in the source
> LC> code itself, them being Courier, Helvetica, Helvetica-Oblique, and
> LC> Helvetica-BoldOblique.  Since we've been assuming everybody and their
> LC> printers have these, we could reduce the file size by not dumping
> LC> them (or their equivalents).
> 
> So I'm saying we can't solve i18n issues with that way.
> IIRC it seems Chinese printers has no locale-specific
> font. so that they can't solve this problem with that way.

Right.

> Why can you declare 'everybody'?

I see now that I can't, not quite.  In the Red Book, page 773, it says

    While there is not a standard set of fonts that is required by the
    PostScript language, most PostScript products include software for 13
    standard fonts from the Times, Helvetica, Courier and Symbol families.

Are you saying that most Japanese and Chinese printers (that understand
PostScript) don't have these?  I'm saying that if we can assume any default
fonts, these are them, since they're actually listed in the PS reference
book.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?