[XeTeX] where to put woff files

Mike "Pomax" Kamermans pomax at nihongoresources.com
Mon Aug 7 21:53:09 CEST 2017


On 8/6/2017 6:38 PM, Bobby de Vos wrote:
> He also thinks fontconfig/freetype should be enhanced so TrueType (and 
> I would add OpenType) fonts are prioritized before WOFF.

The idea of "installing" a WOFF resource for serving by an OS font 
manager is... bad? That's not what WOFF are for, they are explicitly 
intended to NOT be system level fonts, and allow certain data to be 
omitted because the deployment is known to not be DTP and applications 
but web content through CSS instructions. Using WOFF anyway for 
something like Xe(La)TeX makes no sense, and if Debian allows WOFF to be 
installed at the OS level, that's worth notifying the team over because 
that's not a thing your OS should be doing. Maybe Jonathan as one of the 
WOFF spec authors has a more nuanced opinion here, but this problem 
sounds like it stems directly from an OS treating WOFF resources as 
something they are absolutely not, with the obvious and predictable 
result of breaking expectations about font resource handling.

Also on a technical note, there is no "truetype vs. opentype" in the 
context of font parsers. There are only OpenType fonts, all with the 
same magic number, and the "truetype" part refers to one of several ways 
in which any OpenType font organises the glyph data. In the context of 
prioritising which font to load here, it's OpenType vs. WOFF. Which 
tables the OpenType font uses makes no difference. The fact that 
OpenType is a system installable font, and WOFF are not, is the real 
difference. So hopefully the mess that the very notion of 
"installing-WOFF-as-system-fonts" introduces can be looked at, thought 
about, and then wisely removed again. It makes no sense at all.

- Pomax


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