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Summary: condensed Nimbus fonts inaccessible to applications
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=436505
------- Additional Comments From bl.bugs@gmail.com 2008-03-07 15:44 EST -------
But until all the applications are fixed, why not fix the font?
Nicolas has explained a few times on the mailing list: if we "fix" the fonts there will be less of an incentive to fix the applications, and will take considerably longer to be fixed.
Secondly, we cannot fix all the fonts. Buy several expensive font sets on from Linotype for example and notice that they're in OpenType nowadays with 60+ styles in one family not being an exception, and we can't possibly fix commercial fonts, so the person who has those fonts won't really be happy about the fact not being able to select them...
I'm not trying to stop the tide. But pretending the tide has already come in is unrealistic. I see you as King Kanute exhorting the tide to come in when it is a mile away.
The tide has come in a long time now, Arial Narrow is part of the Arial family for example. The commercial fonts use it now. We at DejaVu Fonts have condensed styles now, and they're in the same family for a very long time now.
(note that I probably should mention "preferred family" instead of "family" above, since there's a difference there, but fontconfig uses the former one anyway -- you could reverse fontconfig support for preferred family and you'll have those fonts the way you want them: condensed in its own family. Except with Nimbus I guess which isn't OpenType.)
Good for them. What applications can take advantage of this? I've looked for the "gtk2 font selector" you've claimed has been fixed and can't find it. Of course it can be done and I support this kind of fix. LaTeX2e has had this kind of flexibility for years.
If the gtk2 font selector handles it, it means that all Gnome applications handle it (except for those with own font selectors of course).