[9fans] P9P font server

[9fans] P9P font server

[lucio]

I didn't pay any attention to p9p's fontsrv (sorry, Andrey!  It was
you that got that off the ground, wasn't it?) until this morning's
discussion, but it struck me as a very neat solution for a problem
that has been bugging me for a long time: avoiding the time consuming
repeated installation of Plan 9 fonts.  Specifically, p9p itself and
local instances of 9vx could be smaller and the installation (and
download, in most cases) would be quicker.

The question then becomes whether fontsrv could be "ported" to Plan 9
together with the supporting facilities (openfont(2) is my guess)?  I
certainly would be willing to give such port a try, if I can be
convinced that it is not beyond my ability.

++L

Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[erik quanstrom]

> that has been bugging me for a long time: avoiding the time consuming
> repeated installation of Plan 9 fonts.  Specifically, p9p itself and
> local instances of 9vx could be smaller and the installation (and
> download, in most cases) would be quicker.
> 
> The question then becomes whether fontsrv could be "ported" to Plan 9
> together with the supporting facilities (openfont(2) is my guess)?  I
> certainly would be willing to give such port a try, if I can be
> convinced that it is not beyond my ability.

this won't necessarly save disk space:
	; du */cyberbit*
	12283	bit/cyberbit
	13041	ttf/cyberbit.ttf

personally, i like the simplicity of plan 9's approach.  a bigger issue
for me is plan 9's fixed string height: “” looks bad.

- erik

Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[lucio]

> personally, i like the simplicity of plan 9's approach.  a bigger issue
> for me is plan 9's fixed string height: “” looks bad.

I'm at the receiving end of what is not as slow an Internet connection
as I have suffered from in the past, but it's expensive.  And the
hardware I have access to is also not very fast.  Storage is a minor
issue here, although it can't be totally ignored.  Installing Plan 9,
Inferno (yes, that one too contributes a set of fonts) and p9p just
takes too long and after a few times one gets impatient.

The string height, is that a font or a rendering problem?  I mean, do
the Plan 9 fonts suffer from it, or is it the graphics system that
can't deal with ascenders adequately?  Looking at your example, I'd
say the former.

++L

PS: Your answer, then, is" "don't bother", I presume.  Are there more
opinions?  Different ones?

Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[andrey mirtchovski]

I didn't do fontsrv. The closest I came to was a 9p snarf buffer that
could be used to copy/paste between the host mac and a P9 VM running
in Parallels or some other virt env :)

http://mirtchovski.com/p9/osxsnarf/

no opinion on fontsrv for p9, but i'm using it daily in its p9p form :)

Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[lucio]

> no opinion on fontsrv for p9, but i'm using it daily in its p9p form :)

Says a lot.  I'm sorry ot have attributed fontsrv incorrectly, whoever
did it (rsc?) deserves better :-)

It's unfortunate that attribution seems to have never been important
in Plan 9.

++L

Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[Friedrich Psiorz]

I would really like to have fontsrv in native Plan 9. It's nice to be
able to simply download a font or copy it from a unix system and use it
without going through conversion. It would also de-facto introduce a
usable interface to rendering ttf fonts on the fly. This could be a nice
feature in many applications, e.g. abaco or document viewers.
Even for simple conversion, it would be a much nicer interface than
ttf2subf.

I don't think you would have to change anything about the surrounding
system ... isn't that the whole point for fontsrv? If I didn't
misunderstand, it's just a virtual file system that converts ttf fonts
to the Plan 9 pixel font format transparently.

~Fritz

Am 12.12.2013 12:45, schrieb lucio@proxima.alt.za:
> I didn't pay any attention to p9p's fontsrv (sorry, Andrey!  It was
> you that got that off the ground, wasn't it?) until this morning's
> discussion, but it struck me as a very neat solution for a problem
> that has been bugging me for a long time: avoiding the time consuming
> repeated installation of Plan 9 fonts.  Specifically, p9p itself and
> local instances of 9vx could be smaller and the installation (and
> download, in most cases) would be quicker.
>
> The question then becomes whether fontsrv could be "ported" to Plan 9
> together with the supporting facilities (openfont(2) is my guess)?  I
> certainly would be willing to give such port a try, if I can be
> convinced that it is not beyond my ability.
>
> ++L
>
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[Pavel Zholkover]

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Well it's not that simple, the X11 version uses freetype2 and fontconfig to
read/render TrueType fonts..
The OS X is probably doing something similar with Apple's APIs


On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 7:26 PM, Friedrich Psiorz <f.psiorz@gmx.de> wrote:

> I would really like to have fontsrv in native Plan 9. It's nice to be
> able to simply download a font or copy it from a unix system and use it
> without going through conversion. It would also de-facto introduce a
> usable interface to rendering ttf fonts on the fly. This could be a nice
> feature in many applications, e.g. abaco or document viewers.
> Even for simple conversion, it would be a much nicer interface than
> ttf2subf.
>
> I don't think you would have to change anything about the surrounding
> system ... isn't that the whole point for fontsrv? If I didn't
> misunderstand, it's just a virtual file system that converts ttf fonts
> to the Plan 9 pixel font format transparently.
>
> ~Fritz
>
> Am 12.12.2013 12:45, schrieb lucio@proxima.alt.za:
> > I didn't pay any attention to p9p's fontsrv (sorry, Andrey!  It was
> > you that got that off the ground, wasn't it?) until this morning's
> > discussion, but it struck me as a very neat solution for a problem
> > that has been bugging me for a long time: avoiding the time consuming
> > repeated installation of Plan 9 fonts.  Specifically, p9p itself and
> > local instances of 9vx could be smaller and the installation (and
> > download, in most cases) would be quicker.
> >
> > The question then becomes whether fontsrv could be "ported" to Plan 9
> > together with the supporting facilities (openfont(2) is my guess)?  I
> > certainly would be willing to give such port a try, if I can be
> > convinced that it is not beyond my ability.
> >
> > ++L
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>

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Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[Friedrich Psiorz]

I was aware of that. But freetype2 exists for Plan 9, it's used in
ttf2subf. Probably a lot of the code from the X11 version could be reused.

Am 14.12.2013 12:23, schrieb Pavel Zholkover:
> Well it's not that simple, the X11 version uses freetype2 and fontconfig
> to read/render TrueType fonts..
> The OS X is probably doing something similar with Apple's APIs
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 7:26 PM, Friedrich Psiorz <f.psiorz@gmx.de
> <mailto:f.psiorz@gmx.de>> wrote:
>
>     I would really like to have fontsrv in native Plan 9. It's nice to be
>     able to simply download a font or copy it from a unix system and use it
>     without going through conversion. It would also de-facto introduce a
>     usable interface to rendering ttf fonts on the fly. This could be a nice
>     feature in many applications, e.g. abaco or document viewers.
>     Even for simple conversion, it would be a much nicer interface than
>     ttf2subf.
>
>     I don't think you would have to change anything about the surrounding
>     system ... isn't that the whole point for fontsrv? If I didn't
>     misunderstand, it's just a virtual file system that converts ttf fonts
>     to the Plan 9 pixel font format transparently.
>
>     ~Fritz
>
>     Am 12.12.2013 <tel:12.12.2013> 12:45, schrieb lucio@proxima.alt.za
>     <mailto:lucio@proxima.alt.za>:
>     > I didn't pay any attention to p9p's fontsrv (sorry, Andrey!  It was
>     > you that got that off the ground, wasn't it?) until this morning's
>     > discussion, but it struck me as a very neat solution for a problem
>     > that has been bugging me for a long time: avoiding the time consuming
>     > repeated installation of Plan 9 fonts.  Specifically, p9p itself and
>     > local instances of 9vx could be smaller and the installation (and
>     > download, in most cases) would be quicker.
>     >
>     > The question then becomes whether fontsrv could be "ported" to Plan 9
>     > together with the supporting facilities (openfont(2) is my guess)?  I
>     > certainly would be willing to give such port a try, if I can be
>     > convinced that it is not beyond my ability.
>     >
>     > ++L
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     >
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[erik quanstrom]

On Sat Dec 14 08:12:42 EST 2013, f.psiorz@gmx.de wrote:
> I was aware of that. But freetype2 exists for Plan 9, it's used in
> ttf2subf. Probably a lot of the code from the X11 version could be reused.

not sure what version of ttftosubf you're using, but the version i've used
runs on unix.

- erik

Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[Friedrich Psiorz]

http://mirtchovski.com/p9/freetype/

This runs fine on Plan 9.

Am 14.12.2013 14:13, schrieb erik quanstrom:
> On Sat Dec 14 08:12:42 EST 2013, f.psiorz@gmx.de wrote:
>> I was aware of that. But freetype2 exists for Plan 9, it's used in
>> ttf2subf. Probably a lot of the code from the X11 version could be reused.
>
> not sure what version of ttftosubf you're using, but the version i've used
> runs on unix.
>
> - erik
>

Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[andrey mirtchovski]

i really don't understand what the argument is about. if all one needs
is smoothed fonts on plan9 then  short of exposing a fontsrv's file
descriptor somewhere on the public net, we can get "fontsrv for plan9"
in one easy step:

$ for i in `9p ls font/Zapfino/12a`; do 9p read font/Zapfino/12a/$i >
/tmp/font/$i;  echo $i; done;
$ acme -f /tmp/font/font

loop for all fonts we're interested in.

Re: [9fans] P9P font server

[Friedrich Psiorz]

imho, the brilliant thing about fontsrv is that you don't have to know
which fonts you are "interested in", at which sizes etc.
You can't get that kind of flexibility if you statically convert.

It's not just about having smooth fonts in Plan 9; it's about being able
to deal with true type fonts in a natural way.
Fontsrv is a good example of how the file system can be used to provide
additional features within the existing environment, without having to
update any libraries or existing programs to take advantage of it.
I like the idea and I would love to see it in native Plan 9, but sadly I
don't have enough spare time right now. I might try to do it myself in
february.

Am 14.12.2013 18:40, schrieb andrey mirtchovski:
> i really don't understand what the argument is about. if all one needs
> is smoothed fonts on plan9 then  short of exposing a fontsrv's file
> descriptor somewhere on the public net, we can get "fontsrv for plan9"
> in one easy step:
>
> $ for i in `9p ls font/Zapfino/12a`; do 9p read font/Zapfino/12a/$i >
> /tmp/font/$i;  echo $i; done;
> $ acme -f /tmp/font/font
>
> loop for all fonts we're interested in.
>