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Developers' Guide to Defoma - Font Package's TODO
[ Abstract ] [ Copyright Notice ] [ Contents ] [ next ]

Developers' Guide to Defoma
Chapter 1 Font Package's TODO

Font packages should register their fonts to Defoma if the font may be used by various applications. Registration and Unregistration should be performed at postinst and postrm respectively of a font package, so maintainers need to edit them. In addition, each font may have various information called hints which represents its appearance and other data used to achieve appropriate configuration for a specific application, so maintainers need to generate hints.

1.1 Creating Hintfile.

Hintfile describes several fonts and their hints in a single file. Generally, registration and unregistration of fonts are performed through Hintfile, so creating one is the first step to Defoma-ize a font package.

First of all, enter a package's top directory. If the fonts of the package are located under subdirectory, please enter there, and run the following command. 

     	    defoma-hints <category> <font>... 2> hintfile

This command asks various questions for each font listed in <font> which must belong to the specified <category>, and will output Hintfile to hintfile. The hintfile will contain definitions for all the fonts.

If categories of the fonts are partly different, you must run the command and create a hintfile for each category. In other words, category of the fonts described in a single hintfile must be unified.

Note that this command sometimes fails unfortunately because hints-generating routines are not provided for some categories. Currently supported categories are cid, cmap, truetype and type1.

For example, if your font package is placed under ~/font-foo-0.1/, and the type1 fonts foo1.pfa, foo2.pfa and foo3.pfa are located at fonts/ subdirectory, please enter there and run the command like following. 

     	    cd ~/font-foo-0.1/fonts
     	    defoma-hints type1 foo1.pfa foo2.pfa foo3.pfa > hintfile

1.2 Editing Hintfile.

After creating Hintfile, you may possibly want to edit one because mechanically created hints are sometimes not enough. This section describes how to modify a hintfile and its syntax.

Hintfile may contain three elements: category declaration, font definitions and comments. Font definitions and comments are permitted to appear in a single hintfile any number of times, while category declaration must not exist more than once.

Category declaration is generally put at the beginning of a hintfile because it must be put before font definitions. Its syntax is: 

     category <category-name>

Font definition describes one font and its hints. It starts with the begin line and ends with the end line. The begin line also specifies which font is to be defined. Lines between these two lines describes hints of the font. Hintfile must not contain more than one font definition of a single font. The syntax of font definition is: 

     	    begin <font>
     	      <HintTypeA> = <hintA1>
     	      <HintTypeB> = <hintB1> <hintB2>
     	      ...
     	    end

Lines starting with `#' are considered as comments.

Following is the generated hintfile of the mentioned example. 

     	    category type1
     	    begin /path/to/foo1.pfa
     	      FontName = Foo-Regular
     	      Family = Foo
     	      Weight = Medium
     	      Shape = Upright NoSerif
     	      GeneralFamily = SansSerif
     	      Charset = ISO8859-1
     	      Alias = Foo
     	      Priority = 30
     	      X-FontName = -adobe-foo-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
     	    end
     	    begin /path/to/foo2.pfa
     	      FontName = Foo-Bold
     	      Family = Foo
     	      Weight = Bold
     	      Shape = Upright NoSerif
     	      GeneralFamily = SansSerif
     	      Charset = ISO8859-1
     	      Alias = FooBold
     	      Priority = 30
     	      X-FontName = -adobe-foo-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
     	    end
     	    begin /path/to/foo3.pfa
     	      FontName = Foo-Italic
     	      Family = Foo
     	      Weight = Medium
     	      Shape = Italic NoSerif
     	      GeneralFamily = SansSerif
     	      Charset = ISO8859-1
     	      Alias = FooItalic
     	      Priority = 30
     	      X-FontName = -adobe-foo-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
     	    end

The first thing you have to do is to change filenames of fonts to the full paths where these fonts are actually installed. Let's asuume that the font-foo.deb installs these fonts into /usr/share/fonts/type1, then the hintfile goes like this: 

     	    category type1
     	    begin /usr/share/fonts/type1/foo1.pfa
     	    ..
     	    begin /usr/share/fonts/type1/foo2.pfa
     	    ..
     	    begin /usr/share/fonts/type1/foo3.pfa

After this necessary work done, you may want to change or add some hints. The Syntax of describing hints is: 

     	    <HintType> = <hint>...

where <HintType> decides what type of information is described, and <hint> is a value of the <HintType>. You can specify more than one <hint> for one <HintType> by separating them with space.

Hints include information about the appearance. This information should be correctly set to have better results of substituion by Defoma font substitution mechanism. HintTypes for appearance and their description are listed below.

  • Weight .. represents the weight of a font. Bold and Light are the most values for this HintType.

  • Width .. is either Variable or Fixed, which represents whether the width of a font varies or not.

  • GeneralFamily .. is a rough grouping of the appearance of a font. The values of this HintType for alphabetical fonts are Roman, SansSerif, Typewriter and Script. The values for CJK hieroglyphs are Mincho, Gothic and Maru. Symbol is the value for symbolic fonts. You can set your preferred value to this HintType if none of the above matches to your font.

  • Shape .. includes other appearance information like Serif/NoSerif, Upright/Italic/Oblique, and Condensed/Expanded.

In addition, essential information is also included in hints. As the word `essential' tells, this information is required for most categories. The values for some of the essential HintTypes are predefined. Following is a list of essential information.

  • FontName .. is a real name of the font. You should not specify more than one values to this HintType. The value should be PostScript-like font name.

    Charset .. represents standards of collections of characters which the font contains. The values for this HintType is predefined and is listed below.

    • ISO8859-n (n = 1..15)

    • KOI8-R (Russian standard)

    • KOI8-U (Ukrainian standard)

    • JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0201 (Japanese standards)

    • KSX1001, KSX1003 (Korean standards)

    • GB2312, GBK, GB18030 (Chinese (PRC) standards)

    • CNS11643-n (Taiwan national standard)

    • BIG5 (Taiwan de-facto standard)

    • BIG5-HKSCS (HongKong standard)

    • font-specific (for symbolic fonts)

    • ISO10646-1

  • UniCharset .. represents actual Charset contained by a font whose Charset is ISO10646-1. ISO10646-1 can be considered as a collection of already existing Charsets, so when Charset of a font is ISO10646-1, UniCharset should represent its actual content.

  • Encoding .. represents which encoding is used to access the font. Most categories do not limit the encoding, so this HintType is omitted in most cases.

  • Direction .. represents the direction of writing for which the glyphs of the font are for. The value is either Vertical or Horizontal.

  • Location .. is only used in truetype category. defoma-hints will automatically set this value, so you do not need to consider about this HintType.

Finally, additional information is also included in hints.

  • Alias .. represents other name(s) of the font. As the same as FontName, the value for this HintType should be PostScript-like.

  • Priority .. represents the degree of preference of the font. This value should be specified in an integer between 0 and 99. Generally, beautiful scalable fonts should have higher priority.

  • X-FontName .. is XLFD(s) of the font, if the font is used in X. Defoma doesn't take part in font configuration in X, so packages must install the font to X separately. Usually the value can be taken from .scale file.

    NOTE: x-ttcidfont-conf manages configuration of TrueType and CID fonts for X through the Defoma framework, so font packages for these fonts do not or should not install the font to X separately. Instead, just register fonts to Defoma.

  • Transform .. controls if the font is transformed into Bold shape and/or Slanted shape. Its values are: Boldize, Slant, NotBoldize and NotSlant.

1.2.1 Multiple Face/Charset in a Single Font.

Some Type1 fonts contain multiple charsets in a single pfa/pfb file, and TrueType Collection fonts (.ttc) contain multiple faces in a single ttc file. It means individual hints are needed for each face/charset. To realize this, defoma provides subhints mechanism.

This is an example of a hintfile for a type1 font with multiple encoding. The font a.pfa (Helvetica) is usually accessed in ISO8859-1 encoding, but by re-encoding the font, it can also be accessed in ISO8859-2 and KOI8-R encodings. 

     	      category type1
     	      begin /font/a.pfa
     	        FaceNum = 3
     	        Inherit = Weight Shape Width Priorty Family GeneralFamily
     	        FontName = Helvetica
     	        Charset = ISO8859-1
     	        Weight = Medium
     	        Shape = Upright NoSerif
     	        Family = Helvetica
     	        GeneralFamily = SansSerif
     	        Priority = 20
     	        X-FontName = -foo-bar-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
     
     	        FontName1 = Helvetica-ISO8859-2
     	        Charset1 = ISO8859-2
     	        X-FontName1 = -foo-bar-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-2
     
     	        FontName2 = Helvetica-KOI8-R
     	        Charset2 = KOI8-R
     	        X-FontName2 = -foo-bar-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-koi8-r
     	      end

You will find out unfamiliar hinttype FaceNum and Inherit, and numbered hinttypes.

Non-numbered hints contain hints for the default charset ISO8859-1 in the same way as usual Type1 fonts. Hints can be inherited to subhints, and Inherit hinttype decides which hinttypes to be inherited, so hints that are common to most of the subhints like Family, Weight and Shape, you should set the hinttype Inherit.

FaceNum hinttype specifies how many subhints the hints contain. In this example, there are two subhints plus default hints, so its value is set to 3.

Numbered hints are called subhints, which consist of charset specific hints. In this example, subhints only contains FontName, Charset and X-FontName. Other important hinttypes are inherited from Non-numbered hints.

Here's another example for a Unicode Type1 font, which is usually accessed in Unicode encoding, and by re-encoding the font, it can also be accessed in ISO8859-1, ISO8859-2 and ISO8859-3. 

     	      category type1
     	      begin /font/b.pfa
     	        FaceNum = 4
     	        Inherit = Weight Shape Width Proirty Family GeneralFamily
     	        FontName = Helvetica-Unicode
     	        Charset = ISO10646-1
     	        UniCharset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3
     	        Weight = Medium
     	        Shape = Upright NoSerif
     	        Family = Helvetica
     	        GeneralFamily = SansSerif
     	        Priority = 20
     	        X-FontName = -foo-bar-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
     
     	        FontName1 = Helvetica-ISO8859-1
     	        Charset1 = ISO8859-1
     	        X-FontName1 = -foo-bar-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
     
     	        FontName2 = Helvetica-ISO8859-2
     	        Charset2 = ISO8859-2
     	        X-FontName1 = -foo-bar-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-2
     
     	        FontName1 = Helvetica-ISO8859-3
     	        Charset1 = ISO8859-3
     	        X-FontName1 = -foo-bar-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-3
     	      end

Note that the value of non-numbered Charset is ISO10646-1 and UniCharset represents what charsets the Unicode Type1 font actually consists of.

This is an example for Unicode TrueType fonts whose glyphs are correspondent to a collection of ISO8859-1, ISO8859-2 and ISO8859-3. 

     	      category truetype
     	      begin /font/c.ttf
     	        FontName = Verdy-Bold
     	        Charset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3 ISO10646-1
     	        UniCharset = ISO8859-1 ISO8859-2 ISO8859-3
     	        Encoding = Unicode
     	        Location = English Slovenian Turkish
     	        Weight = Bold
     	        Shape = NoSerif
     	        GeneralFamily = SansSerif
     	        Family = Verdy
     	      end

No subhint is needed to represent multiple charsets of TrueType fonts. Setting Charset to the available charsets will do.

1.3 Packaging.

Now let's build a Defoma-aware font package. To make things easier, using debhelper is strongly recommended. Following tutorial describes about a debhelper-based package.

1.3.1 Using dh_installdefoma.

Since defoma 0.7.0, it provides a debhelper program for defoma named dh_installdefoma. Using this program makes it much easier to defoma-ize a package.

  1. Put the hintfile into debian/ subdirectory and name it as defoma-hints. 
         		    mv fonts/hintfile debian/defoma-hints

  2. Edit debian/rules to calldh_installdefoma in binary-indep or binary-arch phase. it may be best to add it just after dh_installdebconf. 
         		    (ex: debian/rules)
     		    binary-indep: build install
     		            dh_testdir
     		            dh_testroot
     		            dh_installdebconf
     		            dh_installdefoma
     		            dh_installdocs
                                 ...

  3. Edit debian/control to make the package depend and build-depend on defoma. 
         		    (ex: debian/control)
     		    Build-Depends: defoma (>= 0.7.0)
     		    ...
     		    Depends: defoma
     		    ...

1.3.2 Without using dh_installdefoma.

Although using dh_installdefoma is strongly recommended, sometimes you have to do what dh_installdefoma does manually. Following lists describes this ordinal way of defoma-izing.

  1. Put hintfile(s) into debian/ subdirectory. 
         		    mv fonts/hintfile debian/

  2. Edit the debian/rules file to install the hintfile(s) into etc/defoma/hints/ directory as <package-name>.hints. 
         		    (ex: debian/rules)
     		    PKG = <package-name>
     		    DIR = `pwd`/debian/$(PKG)
     		    install: build
     		    ...
     		    install -m 644 debian/hintfile \
     		    $(DIR)/etc/defoma/hints/$(PKG).hints

  3. To create the etc/defoma/hints directory before actually installing the hintfile there, edit debian/dirs. 
         		    (ex: debian/dirs)
     		    etc/defoma/hints

  4. The hintfile must be a conffile, so edit debian/conffiles. 
         		    (ex: debian/conffiles)
     		    /etc/defoma/hints/<package-name>.hints

  5. Registration of fonts must be performed at postinst. Edit debian/postinst to call defoma-font with reregister-all command. NOTE that the command is not register-all. Using this command is able to not only just register fonts described in a hintfile, but also update revised hints to Defoma, so this command is used for both newly installing and upgrading purpose. 
         		    (ex: debian/postinst)
     		    ...
     		    FILE='/etc/defoma/hints/<package-name>.hints'
     		    if [ "$1" = configure ]; then
     		    /usr/bin/defoma-font reregister-all $FILE
     		    fi

  6. Unregistration of fonts must be performed at prerm when the package is going to be removed. Edit debian/prerm to call defoma-font with purge-all command. 
         		    (ex: debian/prerm)
     		    ...
     		    FILE='/etc/defoma/hints/<package-name>.hints'
     		    if [ "$1" = remove ]; then
     		    /usr/bin/defoma-font purge-all $FILE
     		    fi

  7. Edit debian/control to make the package depend on defoma. 
         		    (ex: debian/control)
     		    ...
     		    Depends: defoma
     		    ...

[ Abstract ] [ Copyright Notice ] [ Contents ] [ next ]
Developers' Guide to Defoma
Yasuhiro Take (take@debian.org)