From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 21:33:23 -0500 From: Latchesar Ionkov To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] ttf2subf Message-ID: <20060323023323.GA18511@ionkov.net> References: <14ec7b180603221645s51124238u608b7457cf02f360@mail.gmail.com> <109e196c9ccbae39c56a955dbc3e150d@swtch.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <109e196c9ccbae39c56a955dbc3e150d@swtch.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Topicbox-Message-UUID: 1bf173be-ead1-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 I think the magic most ttf fonts use to look good on screen is embedding bitmap fonts for the small sizes. Thanks, Lucho On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 09:25:39PM -0500, Russ Cox said: > > i did for a while and you can find the latest source on sources or on > > the web. i heard there's another ttf2subf which gets better results > > generating less subfonts (which is what i worked last on, and i think > > i made reasonable success). i have no idea whether the other one has > > made it out. > > the program that generates fewer subfonts is one that > rob wrote and starts with bdf, not ttf. > > generating screen fonts from ttf is basically not a good idea. > they're going to be ugly at the low resolutions unless they > were explicitly designed to double as screen fonts. the only > examples i know of in that camp are verdana and georgia, > but i'm not sure that the magic ttf goo that encodes how to > make them look good at small resolutions is known to libfreetype. > http://www.will-harris.com/verdana-georgia.htm > > you're much better off finding fonts that were designed as > real bitmap fonts from the start. any of apple's early bitmap > fonts would fit this category too, but i'm sure they're not > available for general use. > > all that said, we've got a collection of very nice fonts - the pelm, > lucm, and lucida bitmaps - i'd stick to those. if you must, there's > always the x11 fixed-width fonts (/lib/font/bit/fixed). > > russ