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
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>