Re: Specifying different generic font for different weights and styles

Ok, thanks.

In the interim, I will see if I can write a style sheet or Java code
to modify the FO to include specific font family/weight/style,
rather than depend on subsequent steps to map "sans-serif".

I took a quick look at this already, but it is a bit ugly because
one has to track what is inherited from parent <fo:block/> elements.

David

On 2/27/14 1:12 PM, Hussein Shafie wrote:
> First of all, please understand that, for several reasons, XMLmind
> XSL-FO Converter cannot be compared to XSL-FO processors such as XEP,
> Antenna House and FOP, which all generate PDF.
>
> One of these reasons is font management.
>
> Because by default PDF only supports 14 fonts
>
> Times-Roman
> Times-Italic
> Times-Bold
> Times-BoldItalic
> Helvetica
> Helvetica-Oblique
> Helvetica-Bold
> Helvetica-BoldOblique
> Courier
> Courier-Oblique
> Courier-Bold
> Courier-BoldOblique
> Symbol
> ZapfDingbats
>
> and because these fonts have very few glyphs, all the aforementioned
> XSL-FO processors are forced to embed subsets of third-party fonts in
> the generated PDF file. This explains why all these tools have complex
> configuration files and have an evolved way of specifying font mapping.
>
> The situation is totally different for XMLmind XSL-FO Converter which
> generates RTF, WML, DOCX and ODT files making use of whatever font is
> available on the system where the word processor is being run.
>
>
>
>
> This being said, XMLmind XSL-FO Converter exists since 2002 and you are
> the first customer[*] to request this feature (which is: support not
> only typeface mapping, but also font mapping). We would have implemented
> this feature if there was a demand for it.
>
> Now that
>
> - we have a demand for it and
> - that you have proved us that organizations generating multi-language
> documents (very few of our customers indeed) are more or less forced to
> stick to the ``lonely'' "Arial Unicode MS" font,
>
> we'll seriously consider implementing the feature you want.
>
> However this is unlikely to happen in the near future (we have released
> v5 just a few days ago: http://www.xmlmind.com/news.html).
>
>
>
>
> ---
> [*] Most of our customers are large western corporations (banks,
> insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc) generating XSL-FO
> out of database contents using very specific, in-house, XSLT
> stylesheets. Very few of our customers use the DocBook or DITA XSLT
> stylesheets.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 02/27/2014 01:48 PM, David Clunie wrote:
>>
>> 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 Clunie wrote:
>> 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
>
>
>
>

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