From: Nikolai Grigoriev (grig@renderx.com)
Date: Wed Mar 24 2004 - 12:10:00 PST
John,
> We're converting from FOP to XEP for our in-house
> DocBook->PDF toolchain. I'm very happy so far
> except for the small number of built-in fonts.
In XEP, only Adobe Base 14 fonts are treated as built-in;
all the rest shall be embedded. This is a feature of PDF,
not of XEP.
> * Is there some magic configuration thing we can tweak
> so that AcroRead and the printers use whatever font
> source they're currently using?
It cannot be automatic. XEP should be made aware of the font
metrics; it cannot invent them. I don't know how FOP is coping
with the situation; perhaps they store metrics inside?
> * Are there reasonably decent public-domain fonts out there?
Yes, quite a few. The first source of inspiration are font resources
in TeX packages and GhostScript. Many of these fonts are GPL;
but this is a problem for us as makers of commercial software,
not for you as a final non-profit user.
> * If the only choice is to purchase them, whose should we buy?
It does not matter, actually. For safety, it might be easier to stick
to big names: Adobe, Agfa-Monotype, Linotype, ITC, etc.;
but in general, any font on www.myfonts.com is good.
> At the moment I need only a small number of fonts:
>
> Palatino: regular, italic, bold, bold italic, small-caps
A very close GPL analogue exists in GhostScript: Palladio.
The font is produced by a respected German foundry,
URW++. GhostScript uses it to emulatePalatino in its
PostScript interpreter. Look in the fonts/ directory of your
GhostScript installation; fonts.dir is an index of the fonts.
For XEP, you need an AFM and a PFB file for each
outline variant.
> Lucida Typewriter: regular, italic, bold, bold italic
A free analogue is LuxiMono, donated by Bigelow & Holmes
and URW++ to XFree86. You can take it e.g. from CTAN:
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/LuxiMono/.
License is quite liberal. It has the same design (and
the same authors :-)) as Lucida Typewriter, and is
only slightly narrower. (In XEP, you can adjust
the pitch by selecting an appropriate font-stretch
value to scale the text horizontally; but IMHO
a narrower monospace font looks better).
Best regards,
Nikolai Grigoriev
RenderX
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