I can think of a number of possibilites.

Cache all the glyphs for a font at certain point sizes, plus the metrics. Freeze
that cache, and carry it around in the image.

Carry the font file around in the image, and push it onto the disk if missing.
Then read from disk.

Carry the font file around in the image, and get Freetype to load it from an
in-memory stream.

Revert to an available font (ttf, internal Strike, or whatever) if the font file
is missing.

Then there are licensing issues. Some font files may be freely distributable,
others may only be distributable in the original form, others not distributable
at all. etc. So, perhaps we need to be able to do a mixture of all the above?
I'm not sure what the license for the Bitstream Vera fonts says.
But, in any case, handling missing fonts seems like a good idea :)
Cheers,
Andy

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "stéphane ducasse" <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch>
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.squeak.general
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 7:27 AM
Subject: Re: Henrik antialising


> Hi Andy
>
> Yesterday we had a lab on linux with vw7.3 and none of the Unit
> (TestRunner or RBSUnitExtensions) could work.
> We got all the time a primitive failed related to the fonts.
> Apparently some fonts were missing
> and the system was then not working.
>
> Could you let me know if with the plugin you are writing we would end
> up with the same problem?
> Are the fonts looked up on the local disc?
>
> Stef
>
>