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- defoma for Debian
- ----------------------
-
- DEFOMA stands for DEbian FOnt MAnager.
-
- Whenever a font is installed or removed, every application that
- depends on or makes use of or anyway has something to do with the font
- has to be configured about the font. Such a process should be
- automated, but in fact only a few applications automate it. It means
- that each user or a system administrator needs to configure most of
- applications manually about fonts, to make use of fonts from the
- applications. This is really waste of time and requires knowledge to
- some degree.
-
- Defoma can do configuration about fonts automatically in place of
- a system administrator. In fact Defoma just provides a framework
- of automatic configuration about fonts. Its rough flow is, a font gets
- registered to Defoma with its category and hints, then a configuration
- script of each application gets called. The script is needed to be
- provided for each category by an application.
-
- PostScript fonts are more problematic, because what PS fonts are
- available for printing are completely unknown to applications.
- Applications that output PostScript file (like tgif and abiword) may
- provide a menu for choosing PS fonts. Ideally such a menu contains
- all of the printable PS fonts, but actually only well-known and
- general PS fonts are included. For PS Printer users, Defoma provides
- a nice interface to register PS printer fonts
- (called defoma-psfont-installer), and for users who print PS files by
- using a PS renderer (like ghostscript), the renderer registers PS fonts
- as printable. These mechanisms cause such applications to have enough
- information for the menu.
- In addition, these PS fonts are registered with their hints, which is
- very useful for font substitution. If a PS previewer cannot provide
- all the printable PS fonts, previewable PS fonts should substitute for
- lacking printable PS fonts. Hints help to decide which font is the best
- (that is, the most similar) to substitute for each of the lacking fonts.
- This substituting mechanism is another feature of Defoma.
-
- -- Yasuhiro Take <take@debian.org>, Sat, 2 Dec 2000 00:14:21 +0900
-