Re: Font download in SVGPrint document...

On Fri 02 Jan 2004, Roland Mainz wrote:

> 
> Alex Danilo wrote:
> > >I wasn't aware that there is a spec for font outlines described via SVG.
> > >Sounds nice - but it seems to have to write another converter
> > >(TTF/OTF/PS Type1/BDF/PCF) --> SVG-Font... ;-(
> > >
> > >Two questions:
> > >- Is there already such a converter available somewhere ?
> > 
> > I believe there is a converter for TrueType somewhere, I can't remember
> > where though.
> 
> Please drop me an email if you find a Freetype2-based one... :)

I played around trying to get Freetype2 to export SVG fonts.
The SVG bit is fairly easy. For some reason I was having trouble
with Freetype (probably using the wrong APIs).

The truetype->SVG convertor Alex mentioned is part
of the Apache Batik project http://xml.apache.org/batik

There is another convertor here:
http://www.gdv.uni-hannover.de/~peinecke/font2svg/

> > >- IS there any utility which supports SVG fonts (to test the output of
> > >my converter code) ?
> > 
> > The Adobe & Corel SVG plugins & Batik's Squiggle viewer will support
> > display of SVG fonts.

Support for SVG font (outlines) is required for conformance to
any profile of SVG (Tiny, Basic or Full). So, lots of viewers
support it (eg. the BitFlash and ZOOMON mobile viewers).

> Mhhh, is any one of these canidates supported on Linux/x86 and/or
> Solaris/SPARC ?

Batik is Java, so it runs on Solaris and Linux, and has source
code.

The Adobe viewer also runs on linux and solaris.

> > >It seems that the "SVG fonts" option is the way which should be used for
> > >SVGPrint, otherwise the neccesary support code within devices such as
> > >printers would become much larger just to support another bunch of font
> > >formats (and the SVGPrint spec would need to specify a standard for
> > >downloading such "alien" (e.g. non-XML syntax based) font formats).
> > 
> > Yes, also SVG fonts allow for exactly reproducable results on all
> > implementations and have good support for Unicode as well.
> 
> ... but it seems there is currently no support for hinting (OKOK, it's
> debateable whether hinting makes sense at 600DPI :) and some neat stuff
> from OpenType isn't available either.

We are considering adding hinting in SVG 1.2, but we can't promise
it yet.

There is also the alternative to embed the OpenType (or whatever format)
font within the SVG using base64 encoding and the CSS Web Font
facility. Illustrator does this, with an Adobe specific font
format called CEF.

Dean

Received on Friday, 2 January 2004 06:40:48 UTC