[Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#573125: otf-ipafont provides ttf

[Atsuhito Kohda]

Hi Yamane-san,

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:19:31 +0900, Hideki Yamane wrote:

>> With XeTeX and/or LuaTeX, we use directly font name like
>> "ipam.ttf" or "iam.otf", then how one can distinguish
>> TrueType version of IPA and OpenType version of IPA?
> 
>  .otf = only PostScript data (no TrueType outlines) + TrueType data
>  .ttf = TrueType data
> 
>  Some of .otf files does not contain TrueType and other .otf files does.
>  It means, some .otf files equal to .ttf files, you cannot distinguish
>  those with only its extensions.

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:42:54 +0900, Hideki Yamane wrote:

>  It seems the problem in XeTeX/LuaTex, we cannot identify whether it is
>  OpenType font or not with just its extensions. As I said, OpenType spec
>  allows us to use .ttf extensions for OpenType font. 

I guess you misunderstand something.  
I didn't say we can determine if a font is OpneType or TrueType 
with its extension.
As the following showed, there is diffence between IPA (ver.3) 
and IPA (ver.2) so I think it is reasonable they have different 
names.  It doesn't matter if main name is different or extension 
is different.  Note, in the following paragraph, you can read
OpenType=IPA(ver.3) and TrueType=IPA(ver.2).

>> With XeTeX, OpenType fonts support vertical typesetting very well 
>> but TrueType fonts don't.  On the contrary, OpenType fonts make 
>> XeTeX/LuaTeX to run very slowly but TrueType fonts make them
>> to run fast.

The following is Debian specific and not so important nor
urgent.

>  Some of applications uses Kochi font directly. It is ugly and not flexible
>  dependency to ttf-kochi. I want to avoid such situations by providing 
>  ttf-japanese-{gothic,mincho}.ttf and modify such applications. When we would
>  add changes to those applications, just replace s/kochi-gothic.ttf/ttf-japanese-gothic.ttf/
>  If I would provide otf-japanese-gothic.otf, it is not meaningful so much.

So only briefly: I know alternative is smart but then the "ttf-" 
is redundant and also confusing, IMHO.  

>> Anyway please consider renaming the fonts.
> 
>  Doesn't it cause any problems compatible with other than Debian?

So I guess renaming only extension might be safer than 
renaming main font name.  Further, I believe this is a 
problem of the upstream.

In short, my request is:
it is reasonable that different fonts have differen names
regardless of difference in extension or in main name.

And it will be best if this is fixed by the upstream.  
Is it impossible to release one version for MacOSX with ipa*.ttf 
and another version for other OS'es with ipa*.otf ?

I hope my explanation is clear enough.
Thanks for your maintenance.

Best regards,				2010-3-15(Mon)

-- 
 Debian Developer - much more I18N of Debian
 Atsuhito Kohda <kohda AT debian.org>
 Department of Math., Univ. of Tokushima