[PD] font issues/questions, and also discrepancies between operating systems

[Alexandre Torres Porres]

Em sex., 24 de jan. de 2020 às 16:50, IOhannes m zmölnig <zmoelnig at iem.at>
escreveu:

> On 1/24/20 3:38 AM, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
> > Hi, I've been updating and fixing cyclone/comment and I realized Pd loads
> > similar but different fonts depending on the operating system.
>
> before you investigate on what Pd might possibly do wrong, please
> consider (and answer) the following questions:
> - how do wide-spread text editing applications (e.g. MS/Open/Libre
> Office) handle this?
>

I was actually testing this before asking here. I could see that Libre
Office did something similar where it loaded a similar font to Helvetica
when I didn't have it. At least I think so.


> - how do even more wide-spread text reading applications (browsers)
> handle this?
> - how do graphic applications (e.g. photoshop/gimp) handle this?
> - how do typesetting applications (e.g. Indesign/Illustratur/Inkscape)
> handle this?
>
> test all of them on multiple platforms and multiple installations of
> each platform (as used by real people; not just pristine installations).
>
> can you name a reference application that handles fonts "correctly"?
> what does this reference application do to achieve this?


My actual main concern comes from dealing with cyclone/comment and I just
wanted to confirm if we had "DejaVu Sans Mono" for every platform, which I
think it's quite clear. I'm just trying to see if it's working correctly
and I just wanna know what kind of font it's loading, namely when you don't
have something like "helvetica" or "times", but it finds something similar.

My best/ideal solution is if I could make cyclone/comment say *you tried to
load helvetica, but I loaded "x" instead*. Now, apparently this is handled
internally via tk, and I've been having a hard time figuring out how it
does so and if it's possible finding out and printing the actual loaded
font. So the it seems both cyclone/comment and iemguis load fonts in the
same way and this is handled by tk in a rather obscure way.

As far as Pd issues go. I'm sure it was attempted to make this as close to
100% equal as possible, and I'm just curious on what still needed to be
made. Now, considering that iemguis properties come with 3 harcoded fonts
and it seems only one of them is guaranteed, I could suggest we tried to
make Pd come with the exact 3 same fonts or maybe find out and use on the
drop down menu the actual font name we're using.

cheers
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