Re: [ft] Parsing AFM files without PFA/PFB

[Werner LEMBERG]

> Does FreeType provide a way to parse an AFM file and extract the
> corresponding glyph metrics and kerning information, when the
> accompanying PFA/PFB file is not present?

No.

> One use case is Matplotlib's postscript backend, which can layout
> glyphs just based on their metrics but does not need the pfa/pfb
> files itself.  Right now Matplotlib uses its own handwritten AFM
> parser, but it would be nice if FreeType's AFM support could be used
> instead.

Well, FreeType is a *rendering* library, i.e., its main goal is to
produce bitmaps.  Scanning AFM files alone is completely useless for
FreeType; for this reason there isn't a separate API to access the
metrics data.


    Werner