[Sugar-devel] [GSOC] Font Editor Next Steps

[Yash Agarwal]

On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 3:32 AM Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:

>
> Hi
>
> On 22 May 2016 at 17:50, Yash Agarwal <agrwal.ysh94 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the feedback Dave!
>> I've made the changes to the proposal
>> <https://sugarlabs.github.io/edit-fonts-activity/latest-proposal> as per
>> your comments
>>
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>> I need help/advice regarding a few things:
>> I'm going to ask them here and then make a compiled blog post in a
>> question-answer format once we sort them out. IMHO this will be a better
>> way to document this.
>>
>
> Sounds good :)
>
>
>> [WORKING WITH FONTS INSIDE SUGAR]
>> I found much of the info regarding loading fonts and using them to format
>> a text string in Gonzalo
>> Odiard's
>>  code
>> <https://github.com/sugarlabs/edit-fonts-activity/blob/master/activity.py> (which
>> was a great read :D) . But this Activity only lists the current fonts in
>> the system and to make a proper font manager I need to know the following:
>>
>>    1. Where are fonts stored in sugar and what format they are stored
>>    in?
>>
>> You can find the locations of ttfs on a GNU system by running,
>
>     $ locate ttf
>
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Undiscoverable/Fonts mentions that
> users can store fonts in ~/.fonts/ and that the FontConfig cache tool must
> be used when fonts are copied into there to update the FontConfig database.
>
> http://www.sanfoundry.com/fc-cache-command-usage-linux/ explains this a
> little more.
>
>
>>
>>    1. How to install/uninstall (or Activate/Deactivate) fonts both at
>>    runtime Activity(if we can) and externally(using Ubuntu)?
>>
>> I suggest checking the source code of https://fontmanager.github.io :)
>
>
>>
>>    1. if we are going to make collections of fonts and marking some
>>    fonts as favorites where should these setting be saved?
>>
>> That's a great question that I don't know, but I hope experienced Sugar
> developers can answer :)
>
>
>> [MAKING A GLYPH PICKER INTERFACE]
>> **A grid layout of all the Glyphs within a font like this
>> <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sugarlabs/edit-fonts-activity/gh-pages/files/img/3.png>
>>  **
>>
>>    1. How should we render the Glyphs in the boxes, using Gtk-Cairo or
>>    through Pango which will require the font to be installed as a .ttf maybe?
>>
>> Since this is about the font editor part of the application, the glyphs
> will be defcon objects, and thus need to be rendered with Cairo as drawings
> rather than with Pango as binary fonts.
>

>
>
>> [MAKING A GLYPH EDITING INTERFACE]
>> **A drawing area where we can edit the Glyphs within a font like this
>> <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sugarlabs/edit-fonts-activity/gh-pages/files/img/4.png>
>>  **
>>
>>    1. Should the Glyphs be rendered in this using Cairo?
>>
>>
> Yes.
>
>
>>
>>    1. if yes then should I write my own method for this or is there
>>    something inbuilt in Cairo or a 3rd party lib for reading ufo3's
>>    .glif files?
>>
>> defcon reads the UFO (and thus its GLIF files) and loads their bezier
> outlines as python objects, so you can use pycairo to render them.
>

Oh, I said reading, I meant for rendering them.
defon only gives the data as objects which can contain multiple
components/countours and writng methods/classes for that will be a bit
complex
I think this will be a major part of my GSoC. ;)


>
>
>> I found these links quite useful for getting started with Cairo
>>
>>
>>    - http://www.tortall.net/mu/wiki/CairoTutorial
>>       - http://zetcode.com/gfx/pycairo/basicdrawing/
>>
>> :)
>
>
>> [regarding the way FONTS ARE MODELED in UFOv3
>> <http://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo3/index.html>]
>>
>>    1. why do we need multiple layers in a font?(to store multiple
>>    families..?)
>>
>> When drawing anything it is useful to have reference material close to
> hand. Almost all graphics editors have layers for this purpose -
> gimp/photoshop, inkscape/illustrator, scribus/indesign, etc etc.
>
>
>>
>>    1. why do we need to group glyphs? (is it only for Kearning?)
>>
>> Yes, http://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo3/groups.plist/  says,
>
> "Groups may be used as members of kerning pairs in kerning.plist."
>
>
>>    1. why do we need the image files?(are they used to render the
>>    glyphs?)
>>
>> Which image files?
>
this one  http://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo3/images/
and the image xml element in .glif file.
http://unifiedfontobject.org/versions/ufo3/glyphs/glif/

-- 
> Cheers
> Dave
>
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