From: Jim Colvin (jimcolvin@prodigy.net)
Date: Wed Jul 03 2002 - 17:05:49 EDT
Word handles this situation by allowing the user to specify both the replacement fonts and whether to do soft or hard
substitution. This is controlled by the Font Substitution settings on the Compatibility tab of the Tools | Options dialog. For
reference, here is a screenshot of the Font Substitution dialog:
http://pages.prodigy.net/jimcolvin/Abiword/WordFontSubDialog.png
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joaquín Cuenca Abela" <cuenca@pacaterie.u-psud.fr>
To: <abiword-dev@abisource.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 10:25 AM
Subject: font substitution
I don't know how to implement a font substitution algorithm that makes
sense. The problem:
fonts used in windows are not usually available on others systems. When
you try to open on linux an abiword file that comes from windows, it
will have "Times New Roman", "Arial", etc fonts, but the linux guy
doesn't has these fonts.
If we substitute these fonts for something else, we have to indicate it
in the GUI, ie. if we change Arial for Helvetica, we have to show in the
font family combo box the Helvetica name (as this is the font the
abiword is using to display the text).
This substitution should be a "only visual" one (only the string in the
GUI is affected, but the doc is still saved with "Arial"), or a "hard"
one (the file is saved with "Helvetica").
If the substitution is "hard", what if the user makes a silly change,
saves the doc, and send it back to the windows user? The windows user
will open it, and abiword will have to do another substitution from
"Helvetica" to something else (supposing that the substituted font will
be "Arial" is wrong, the windows user may very well have Helvetica
installed).
If the substitution is "only visual", say that the linux user adds a new
paragraph in "Helvetica", it will be saved in the doc as a "Helvetica"
paragraph, while the others paragraphs will be still "Arial" (and the
GUI is saying that all them have exactly the same font). That's a real
problem. Say a peer makes half an assignment in windows, using "Times
New Roman", and that I finish it in my linux computer, using "Nimbus
Roman" (that, AFAICS is the same font used by my windows peer). I send
back him the assignment, and... surprise! half the assignment uses a
font, and the other half uses a different font. That's not good.
Anybody knows what should I do to solve this problem?
Cheers,
-- Joaquín Cuenca Abela cuenca@pacaterie.u-psud.fr
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