Re: [NTG-pdftex] Question related to .ttc support
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1058c5aefa3802978e05193b3eb09fac.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sat, Aug 09, 2008 at 02:53:07PM +0200, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
Thanh Han The wrote:
Your patch changes pdftex so that it will treat TTC like truetype font. While it works for your case, I am not confident that it's the right way to do that. Someone with a thorough understanding of TTC format can comment on this?
IIRC, the patch will give access to the *first* font in the collection, because that has an offset of zero (which makes the first font in the ttc behave the same as a standalone ttf font, when the ttc header is ignored).
You could apply the patch but not document support for ttc files (because the really patch doesn't implement that). This gives a small subset of ttc functionality, but still better than mishandling the format completely.
how about this: rename (or symlink) the ttc font to ttf, and document this trick in the manual. The way it works is more or less the same, but we don't have to change anything in the sources. Thanh
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/39c2e81c07187f15629693891664005b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Thanh Han The wrote:
how about this: rename (or symlink) the ttc font to ttf, and document this trick in the manual. The way it works is more or less the same, but we don't have to change anything in the sources.
I can see that renaming would work, but that would prevent the .ttc font from working in other applications that require and expect a .ttc, but wouldn't symbolic linking cause a problem in that it would then find /two/ fonts, one .ttc and one .ttf, the former of which it would treat as type-1 and the latter as truetype ?! ** Phil.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c3c447359eb1977fede46b8e718cfd91.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Friends, I forgot to mention some properties related to .ttc files. For many .ttc files of CJK, all fonts in one .ttc file have identical CJK glyphs. Only the latin glyphs are different. But for latex systems, we use these fonts to typeset CJK glyphs only. We have much better latin fonts to typeset latin glyphs. As a result, supporting the first font in .ttc file is good enough for most such applications. In addition, Windows does not support symbolic linking. Only latest Windows versions support hardlink via junction, but it can't work on early versions. Certainly, supporting only the first font of .ttc file is not equal to supporting .ttc file. Better way is to add parameters to select fonts in .ttc file. But it needs significant work. I do not know how to achieve this. So, I think we can apply this patch, and claim in manual that we support "the first font of .ttc file". Maybe someone will work on a patch for full .ttc support later on, if s/he is troubled by the problem. (If no one is troubled, then no need to patch it, right? - that's one of the spirit of opensource :) The aboves are only my two cents. Regards, Hangzai
participants (3)
-
hzluo
-
Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd)
-
Thanh Han The