Cross platform fonts question

Ken Ray kray at sonsothunder.com
Thu Aug 12 21:55:32 EDT 2004


On 8/12/04 5:25 PM, "Cubist at aol.com" <Cubist at aol.com> wrote:

> 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

Well, we can use the fontNames function and get a list (of course it's just
names, and nothing else, but at least it's *something*).

>    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.

Or to assume that "close is OK". I'll bet that this covers most Rev
developers unless what they are doing either (A) requires a specific font,
or (B) is really concerned with exactness. For example, in many cases I have
just allowed the default font to "win out", or would use my own frontscript
to change the font of all the controls on a card during preOpenCard to a
known (common) font. This isn't to say that there aren't issues involved -
there certainly are (some additional space between controls, etc). But for
the most part, since the app I'm delivering is a "business app" (i.e.
contacts, calendar, etc.) for a vertical market who probably cares even less
than the general public, "close is OK".

>> 2) Revolution providing a mechanism for these fonts, as needed, to
>> reside within the standalone and be called from there.
>    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.

Well, Flash and Director do it all the time by allowing TrueType (and I
believe OpenType as well) fonts to be embedded. Perhaps Rev can do the same
thing?


Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com




More information about the use-livecode mailing list