▶ Documentation for remapping-font-template.conf

This advanced template makes it possible to remap bad font metadata to correct
values at the fontconfig level. It is composed of four rules:
— the first one (the actual remapping block) detects fonts that declare
  [problemfontname],[problemfontstyle] and remaps them to
  [correctedfontname],[correctedfontstyle]. You can remap other attributes, use
  fc-query to see what a font file declares and fc-scan to check how you
  corrected it.
— the second one is similar to our substitution rule, and is used to alias
  [problemfontname] to [correctedfontstyle]. This is necessary to avoid
  breaking documents that reference the broken font naming hidden by the
  previous rule. (it does not take the style into account because
  unfortunately fontconfig can not handle it right now)
— the third one tells fontconfig it can use the font named [correctedfontname]
  when an application asks for the generic family [genericname].
— the fourth one tells fontconfig it can complete the font named
  [correctedfontname] with glyphs taken from fonts registered under
  [genericname].

If the problem font includes more than one style, you will have to repeat the
two first blocks for each [problemfontname],[problemfontstyle] couple needing
fixing. The two last rules are similar to what we do in all our other
patterns.

This kind of remapping is necessary because there were few conventions for font
naming for a long time, and some font creators put random garbage in there
(also some fonts were converted from older legacy formats while keeping
the metadata limitations of those formats, and some authors even released fonts
with plain typos in their metadata). Now that the two main companies behind the
OpenType spec, Adobe and Microsoft, specified strict conventions (to help
applications make sense of available fonts), all those font files need to be
fixed.

Such problems should always be reported upstream first.

Unfortunately, upstream can take a long time to act, and meanwhile the problem
metadata will appear in font lists and confuse applications. Since fixing font
files downstream is unpalatable when they are not released as fontforge SFD
files (otherwise, just patch the sfds and re-generate), using fontconfig to
hide the breakage is very convenient.

If you have different needs, take a look at the other templates.

Please replace [problemfontname], [problemfontstyle], [correctedfontname],
[correctedfontstyle], [genericname], with the
appropriate values in the following blocks of instructions.

A [correctedfontname] example would be:
DejaVu Sans
It's the name under which the font appears in GUI font drop-downs.

[correctedfontname] and [correctedfontstyle] values should aim to conform
strictly to the rules defined by Microsoft in its WWS fonts white-paper:
http://blogs.msdn.com/text/attachment/2249036.ashx

Adobe published an introduction to the WWS logic here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/typotechnica2007/Font%20names.pdf

Fontconfig generics ([genericname]) currently include:
— sans-serif
— serif
— monospace
— fantasy
– cursive

Processing the resulting file through xmllint with the "format" flag is usually
a good idea.
$ xmllint --format -o [XX]-[fontname].conf [yourfile]
The output file will be named:
[XX]-[fontname].conf
where [XX] should be a two-digit number corresponding to the font priority in
fontconfig.

© 2009 Nicolas Mailhot <nim at fedoraproject dot org>