RE: [Freefont-bugs] Add extra characters to FreeSerif

[Graeme Kidd]

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> Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2011 09:32:35 +0100
> Subject: Re: [Freefont-bugs] Add extra characters to FreeSerif
> From: address@hidden
> To: address@hidden
> CC: address@hidden

> The answer to your question is: No. In accordance with the Unicode
> standard, the blackboard bold R and Z are in Letterlike Symbols, and
> there are holes in the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols where you
> would expect to find those styled letters.

Wow thanks for taking time to give a very helpful explanation, looking back 
into the SFD file and I can now see the blackboard bold R and Z letters.

There are three ways you can configure FOP to use custom fonts. One is to 
simply let it detect the fonts installed on your system, the second is to 
specify a folder where the fonts are held, and finally you can specify them 
individually.

I have configured it so it looks into a specific directory e.g. "C:\FOP_Fonts". 
This folder then contains a "FreeSerif.afm" and "FreeSerif.pfb" file created 
via the "Generate Font" menu in Fontforge. As a test I created the following FO 
file which was taken from a simple “Hello World” example [1] with the simple 
addition of some extra characters and a font-family.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format";
        font-family="FreeSerif" font-weight="normal" font-style="normal">
  <fo:layout-master-set>
    <fo:simple-page-master master-name="my-page">
      <fo:region-body margin="1in"/>
    </fo:simple-page-master>
  </fo:layout-master-set>

  <fo:page-sequence master-reference="my-page">
    <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">
      <fo:block font-family="FreeSerif" font-weight="normal" 
font-style="normal">
              Lj lj    NJ    Nj    nj    Ǎ    ǎ    Ǐ    ǐ    Ǒ
      ǒ    Ǔ    ǔ    Ǖ    ǖ    Ǘ    ǘ    Ǚ    ǚ    Ǜ    ǜ    ǝ    Ǟ
      ǟ    Ǡ    ǡ    Ǣ    ǣ    Ǥ    ǥ    Ǧ    ǧ    Ǩ ℤ
      </fo:block>
    </fo:flow>
  </fo:page-sequence>
</fo:root>

When this is processed by FOP it generates a warning for the blackboard bold R 
letter:
[WARN ] Glyph "Z" (0x2124) not available in font "FreeSerif".

Since the FreeSerif font is embedded in the PostScript file I can run it 
through Adobe Distiller and get a PDF which contains the following:
"Lj lj NJ Nj nj Ǎ ǎ Ǐ ǐ Ǒ ǒ Ǔ ǔ Ǖ ǖ Ǘ ǘ Ǚ ǚ Ǜ ǜ ǝ Ǟ ǟ Ǡ ǡ Ǣ ǣ Ǥ ǥ Ǧ ǧ Ǩ #"

As you can see it managed to produce all the characters except for the 
blackboard bold Z which has been substituted by a hash. This seems to suggest 
it can find the FreeSerif font but the exported font doesn’t contain the 
blackboard bold Z letter. 

After viewing the font in another Font Manager (Fontforge is installed on 
another computer) I noticed the character map only contained 2,715 glyphs. This 
is a major reduction which might suggest I or Fontforge exported the font 
wrongly.

I can attach the afm and pfb files but any idea what could have gone wrong?

Thanks

[1] http://www.renderx.com/tutorial.html