Mark Mullin wrote:

> Tim Rowledge
> ==============
>         Tim alludes to some of the mechanics that Dan and Andreas foreshadowed,
> i.e.  'wot you lout ?  you thought that fonts wuz equivalent cross platform
> ?  or........   A given TT specification for a font will not neccessarily
> consistantly yield an exactly equivalent form on all invocations on all
> platforms.  And that is a nasty problem (neat crypto app if you think about
> it tho)  I'd like to see proof that this is so, I figure proof of error by
> exception should be easier than the options.

Err, I'm not sure I recognise any of the above. Did I say that? Is
senility biting again?


My point, and I'm sure I did have one, or indeed probably several, for
is it not said that man, by which I mean mankind or perhaps better in
these days of recognising gender equality, humankind, is a creature of
many opinions? Er, what was I saying? Oh yes, I wanted to warn that 
a) enumerating all the fonts on the platform can take a very long time
in some cases
b) mapping names in a way that makes sense across platforms is tricky
c) handling missing fonts (your app wants Swiss bold extra wide 15.45
points , your machine has Helvetica medium 16pt) is a pain.

Given that we are assured that the font bitmaps are not copyrightable,
what is wrong with choosing a platform, writing a program to render a
bunch of fonts character by character into bitmaps, sucking them in and
making StrikeFonts? These are then portable and apparently freely usable.

tim