Re: Specifying different generic font for different weights and styles

In case you think my use case is peculiar, by the way, here
is a long thread that explains the interest other folks have
in this class of problem:

http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2003-m06/0211.html

David

On 2/27/14 7:48 AM, David Clunie wrote:
> Hi Hussein
>
> Well, you may not think it is useful, but your assumptions do
> not hold in the general case.
>
> Specifically:
>
> 1. "Arial Unicode MS" does NOT have italic and bold weight and
> style variants.
>
> 2. "Arial Unicode MS" does have good support for all of the Asian
> characters, which render very well, especially across multiple
> platforms, which is why I use it a lot, without the need to
> explicitly specify a different font for Asian characters or
> detect the language tag and switch fonts in the stylesheets,
> etc.
>
> 3. All other FO tools I have used (XEP, Antenna House and even FOP)
> have the ability to selectively specify different font families
> based upon weight (+/-bold) and style (+/-italic) and so they
> do support my use case, where as yours does not.
>
> To illustrate why this is useful, I have attached screenshots of
> Word 2011 on the Mac rendering docx output from fo2docx using
> no genericFontFamilies font information, using "Arial Unicode MS",
> using ordinary "Arial", and using "Calibri" as you suggest.
>
> You will note that only the "Arial Unicode MS" renders the
> Japanese characters correctly, and sacrifices the bold for
> the headings to achieve that goal.
>
> By contrast, see the screenshot of the PDF output from XEP that
> does distinguish fonts not only at the family but also at the
> weight/style level, which is my "ideal" output (Asian characters
> rendered well, plus bold for heading rendered).
>
> If you can describe a way for me to achieve my objective that your
> product supports that does not require this mechanism, e.g.,
> identify a font that is freely available across all platforms,
> looks as good as "Arial Unicode MS", supports all Unicode code
> points AND contains italic and bold variants of them, then I
> would be very happy to hear about it.
>
> Otherwise this is IMHO a feature that your tools could benefit
> from adding.
>
> David
>
> On 2/27/14 3:25 AM, Hussein Shafie wrote:
>> On 02/26/2014 08:31 PM, David Clunie wrote:
>>>
>>> I just purchased your xfc to use fo2docx and it is working well.
>>>
>>> However, I need to be able to specify the use of the "Arial Unicode MS"
>>> font for ordinary (non-bold, non-italic) text, and "Arial Bold",
>>> "Arial Italic", etc. for the variants, since "Arial Unicode MS"
>>> does not contain those (but I need it for various languages like
>>> Japanese).
>>>
>>> Specifying:
>>>
>>> "-genericFontFamilies=sans-serif=Arial Unicode MS"
>>>
>>> as an argument to fo2docx works just fine to make all "sans-serif"
>>> text use this font, but of course all the bold and italic information
>>> is lost.
>>
>> No, not at all. Please replace "Arial Unicode MS" by Calibri and you'll
>> see that it works as expected. Explanations below.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> I need something like:
>>>
>>> "-genericFontFamilies=sans-serif=Arial Unicode MS, sans-serif-bold=Arial
>>> Bold,
>>> sans-serif-italic=Arial Italic,sans-serif-bold-italic=Arial Bold Italic"
>>
>> The specification you describe is not useful in the general case and as
>> such is not implemented.
>>
>> sans-serif=FOO means that the sans-serif *font* *family* (AKA
>> *typeface*) to be used is FOO.
>>
>> Therefore because FOO is a typeface, it is assumed that all the
>> following *fonts* exist:
>>
>> FOO
>> FOO Bold
>> FOO Oblique or FOO Italic.
>> FOO Bold Oblique or FOO Bold Italic.
>>
>> This is always the case, except for special typefaces such as Symbol,
>> Dingbats, etc.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> I had expected there would have been some sort of configuration file
>>> to feed to fo2docx to specify all the font substitution stuff (e.g.,
>>> like one uses with XEP), but could not find one.
>>>
>>
>> There is no such configuration file. The documentation is up to date:
>>
>> http://www.xmlmind.com/foconverter/_distrib/doc/user/index.html
>>
>> please refer to it, as the support we provide our customers with is
>> quite limited:
>>
>> http://www.xmlmind.com/foconverter/support_policy.html
>>
>>
>>
>>

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