Cross platform fonts question

[Cubist at aol.com]

sez mdswindell at charter.net:
>First, I used the word insurmountable, not trivial.  Worlds apart in 
>meaning and implication.
   Perhaps you should think about exactly & precisely *how* non-trivial it 
*is* to determine which fonts are installed on J. Random User's machine, to 
determine the typographical specifications (character widths, etc) of those 
installed fonts, and to deal with the puzzle presented by fonts whose names are 
identical but whose typographic specifications are *different*. There may well be 
more factors which increase the intractability of the xplat font problem, but 
those three will do for a start.

>I also said I think solving this very "in 
>your face" problem should be a priority.  It is a problem common to all
>who create with Rev in any platform.
   No, it isn't. It's a problem common to all who create *cross-platform 
products*, REGARDLESS of whatever tool(s) they use. *Some* Rev users do that; 
others are perfectly happy to ignore every platform they, themselves, don't use.

>I then suggested two ways that "might" make this thorn in the side more
>manageable:
>
>1) Revolution itself investing in and distributing a limited number of
>font faces which would be identical across platforms (requiring 
>individuals to hire fontographers on their own is not viable).
   This solution assumes that (a) *all* Rev users *will* install each & every 
font that's included with the package, *and* (b) that *no* Rev users will 
*ever* UNinstall the Rev fonts. Can you guarantee either of those assumptions, 
let alone both? Didn't think so...

>2) Revolution providing a mechanism for these fonts, as needed, to 
>reside within the standalone and be called from there.
>
>It appears the former has been shown to work for some users.  You seem
>to be saying that latter option might be legitimate, too, but like you
>I am ignorant of how it might happen.
   Door #2 looks the most promising to my eyes. I just don't know if there 
are any under-the-hood "gotcha"s which might bite Rev in the ass if the engine 
were tweaked to *do* this sort of thing. My tentative assumption, based on the 
fact that the vast majority of apps *don't* do this sort of thing, is that 
there are indeed valid technical reasons for not doing it in most cases; the few 
apps which *do* do it are, as a rule, pretty darned limited in scope, which 
suggests that there are tradeoffs involved, and, in consequence, that these 
tradeoffs are of such a nature as to make the game not worth the candle for most 
apps. Again, I would be very interested in getting true knowledge from someone 
who *does* know what they're talking about...

   A third option has occured to me: Take the bitmaps for every character in 
a font, store all these bitmaps as custom properties, and set the imageSource 
for all the characters in a field to the appropriate custom properties. I can 
already see a number of practical difficulties with this scheme, but it *is* 
doable, and it *would* allow *exactly and precisely the SAME* font(s) to be 
used on *any* platform Rev supports. This last quality, in and of itself, may be 
sufficiently valuable to make it worth a developer's time and effort to go 
this route, in some cases.

>While you would be correct in saying that I am (c) a combination of not
>well-informed and without having invested a lot of thought in the 
>issue, I'm ok with that.  It's not an area I feel I should need to 
>become expert.  I do feel Rev users of any skill level deserve a simple
>(to the user), upfront solution to what seems to be a plaguing problem
>that is not being addressed systemically from  within the Rev 
>environment.
   That's nice. Mind you, I'm *not* disagreeing that a "simple (to the user), 
upfront solution" would be a Really Nifty thing to have, nor do we differ on 
the question of whether or not this problem is (at the very least) a *major 
bloody annoyance*. If you'll pardon the metaphor, I am simply saying, "sounds 
great, but who will bell the cat?"
    _ _ _
  /\_\_\_\   Quentin 'Cubist' Long
 /\/\_\_\_\  Webmaster and co-editor, TSAT netzine
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