Whither fnt2bdf?

[Dan Kegel]

What happened to fnt2bdf?
It was removed as of
http://cvs.winehq.com/cvsweb/wine/tools/Makefile.in.diff?r1=1.20&r2=1.21
but the comment for 1.21 doesn't seem to mention this removal
http://cvs.winehq.com/cvsweb/wine/tools/Makefile.in
Might this be a mistake?
- Dan

[Alexandre Julliard]

Dan Kegel  writes:
> What happened to fnt2bdf?
> It was removed as of
> http://cvs.winehq.com/cvsweb/wine/tools/Makefile.in.diff?r1=1.20&r2=1.21
> but the comment for 1.21 doesn't seem to mention this removal
> http://cvs.winehq.com/cvsweb/wine/tools/Makefile.in
> Might this be a mistake?

It's still available, it's just no longer installed by default, as
part of the effort to clean up the namespace of things we install in
/usr/bin. Anyway these days you are much better off using client-side
fonts than trying to manually convert Windows fonts to X format.

[Dan Kegel]

Alexandre Julliard wrote:
> > What happened to fnt2bdf?
> > It was removed as of
> > http://cvs.winehq.com/cvsweb/wine/tools/Makefile.in.diff?r1=1.20&r2=1.21
>
> It's still available, it's just no longer installed by default, as
> part of the effort to clean up the namespace of things we install in
> /usr/bin. Anyway these days you are much better off using client-side
> fonts than trying to manually convert Windows fonts to X format.

Does that mean Wine can natively handle .fnt fonts (which
X libraries can't natively, I believe) as client side X fonts?
I suppose Wine would need some user-space app to manage
these fonts, then?

Fonts are a total pain to support right.  I think Red Hat 8.1
might be the first version of Red Hat to get it right...
I can hope, anyway...
- Dan

[Alexandre Julliard]

Dan Kegel  writes:
> Does that mean Wine can natively handle .fnt fonts (which
> X libraries can't natively, I believe) as client side X fonts?

My understanding is that FreeType can support bitmap fonts, but that
it's not implemented in Wine yet; Huw can give you the details. Anyway
most of the need for fnt2bdf was to convert the Windows standard
fonts, and these are basically all TrueType now.
> I suppose Wine would need some user-space app to manage
> these fonts, then?

I guess we could have a font control panel at some point, but there
isn't that much to manage anyway. As long as the font files are
somewhere on the font path everything should just work.

[Huw Davies]

On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 10:21:12AM -0800, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
> Dan Kegel  writes:
> > Does that mean Wine can natively handle .fnt fonts (which
> > X libraries can't natively, I believe) as client side X fonts?
>
> My understanding is that FreeType can support bitmap fonts, but that
> it's not implemented in Wine yet; Huw can give you the details. Anyway
> most of the need for fnt2bdf was to convert the Windows standard
> fonts, and these are basically all TrueType now.

Wine doesn't handle fnts quite yet.  However I've just added the
necessary functions to FreeType to enable Wine to get hold of all the
information it needs and hopefully I'll get time to finish the Wine
side of things soon.

The fonts we're missing out on are System, FixedSys, Terminal,
Courier, Small Fonts, MS Sans Serif and MS Serif (note there's also a
Microsoft Sans Serif, but that's TrueType and should work already).

There are also 3 'stroke' fonts called Modern, Roman and Script;
FreeType doesn't support this format yet, but they're as ugly as hell
so probably won't be missed.
> > I suppose Wine would need some user-space app to manage
> > these fonts, then?
>
> I guess we could have a font control panel at some point, but there
> isn't that much to manage anyway. As long as the font files are
> somewhere on the font path everything should just work.

Right.  We'll need to add support for using libfontconfig soon -
that'll mean we don't have to set up a font path manually.

Huw.

[Dan Kegel]

Huw Davies wrote:
> > > Does that mean Wine can natively handle .fnt fonts (which
> > > X libraries can't natively, I believe) as client side X fonts?
> >
> > My understanding is that FreeType can support bitmap fonts, but that
> > it's not implemented in Wine yet; Huw can give you the details. Anyway
> > most of the need for fnt2bdf was to convert the Windows standard
> > fonts, and these are basically all TrueType now.
>
> Wine doesn't handle fnts quite yet.  However I've just added the
> necessary functions to FreeType to enable Wine to get hold of all the
> information it needs and hopefully I'll get time to finish the Wine
> side of things soon.

Woo-hoo!
> > I guess we could have a font control panel at some point, but there
> > isn't that much to manage anyway. As long as the font files are
> > somewhere on the font path everything should just work.
>
> Right.  We'll need to add support for using libfontconfig soon -
> that'll mean we don't have to set up a font path manually.

Yes!  libfontconfig support in Wine will be wonderful,
it'll mean that any fonts the user adds in the "control panel"
in Linux will automatically be available in Wine,
and possibly vice-versa (!).
- Dan

[Fabian Cenedese]

> > > I guess we could have a font control panel at some point, but there
> > > isn't that much to manage anyway. As long as the font files are
> > > somewhere on the font path everything should just work.
> >
> > Right.  We'll need to add support for using libfontconfig soon -
> > that'll mean we don't have to set up a font path manually.
>
> Yes!  libfontconfig support in Wine will be wonderful,
> it'll mean that any fonts the user adds in the "control panel"
> in Linux will automatically be available in Wine,
> and possibly vice-versa (!).

This tool could also be used to just see the installed fonts
and check if they work. Maybe like that the error messages of
not finding fonts go down as you can check first if the font is
really there and working or not.

bye  Fabi

[Dan Kegel]

Alexandre Julliard wrote:
> Dan Kegel  writes:
> > Does that mean Wine can natively handle .fnt fonts (which
> > X libraries can't natively, I believe) as client side X fonts?
>
> My understanding is that FreeType can support bitmap fonts, but that
> it's not implemented in Wine yet; Huw can give you the details. Anyway
> most of the need for fnt2bdf was to convert the Windows standard
> fonts, and these are basically all TrueType now.

I wonder whether people still want to run applications that
are packaged with their own Windows bitmap fonts.  I think
I run into that periodically.  It would be interesting to
work out how to support those properly under Wine, even
though they're obsolete.
> > I suppose Wine would need some user-space app to manage
> > these fonts, then?
>
> I guess we could have a font control panel at some point, but there
> isn't that much to manage anyway. As long as the font files are
> somewhere on the font path everything should just work.

Since the average user can't deal with font paths,
this little font control panel will be important.
Maybe even required for wine1.0, who knows.
- Dan