I agree, very useful, I saved this email for future reference.
Mark
On 3/3/2015 11:29 PM, Dave Pawson wrote:> Very clear, thanks Kevin.>> regards Dave P>> On 3 March 2015 at 22:52, Kevin Brown <kevin@renderx.com> wrote:>> A few recent questions have been asked in Stackoverflow and also in our own>> support groups about fonts. I thought a nice sample here would be>> appropriate.>>>> 1) First, get access to a Unicode font that contains the characters you>> want.>>>> Well there are many places and we are not a font repository. However, one>> great place to look is Google and specifically Google’s fonts. They are>> trying to organize a complete set of fonts for most all of the world’s>> languages. There are certainly many more places and the group is welcome to>> chime in. I happen to have a nice setup with many of the “noto” fonts on>> Google. See https://www.google.com/get/noto/#/>>>> 2) Next, add those fonts to you configuration.>>>> Again, there are many fonts types and many places to put them. Here I am>> only going to describe how I do it to stay organized. I prefe
r to organize>> all my fonts under the RenderX installation. Upgrades will preserve them and>> it makes it easier to deploy to other machines. You can have your own>> methods for sure, organize them into your own areas.>> The "xep.xml" file contains all the information about fonts. There are many,>> many different settings and you can find them all in our documentation. I>> will just cover adding a complete family of the Noto fonts here for>> Simplified Chinese.>>>> First I downloaded the ZIP archive of Simplified Chinese Noto fonts from>> here: https://www.google.com/get/noto/#/family/noto-sans-hans>> In the RenderX installation directory, there is already a directory called>> "fonts/".>> That directory contains the base14 fonts that all installations should come>> with that deal with PDF (the 4 variations each of Helvetica, Times and>> Courier plus Symbol and ZapfDingbats).>> I created a subdirectory under this directory called "Noto/" to handle all>> my google Noto fonts.>> I unzipped the Simplified Chine
se fonts in this directory.>> It contains 7 fonts, all starting with "NotoSansCJKsc" with various weights>> (Light through Black).>> So we need to add these all (if we need them all) to "xep.xml".>> Here's a snippet from my "xep.xml" showing how they are added:>>>> <fonts xmlns="http://www.renderx.com/XEP/config" xml:base="fonts/">> default-family="Helvetica">>> ...>>>> <!-- Google Noto Fonts -->>> <font-group xml:base="Noto/" label="Noto" embed="true" subset="true">> initial-encoding="standard">>> <font-family name="NotoSansCJKsc">>> <font weight="100"><font-data otf="NotoSansCJKsc-Thin.otf"/></font>>> <font weight="200"><font-data otf="NotoSansCJKsc-Light.otf"/></font>>> <font weight="300"><font-data>> otf="NotoSansCJKsc-DemiLight.otf"/></font>>> <font><font-data otf="NotoSansCJKsc-Regular.otf"/></font>>> <font weight="500"><font-data>> otf="NotoSansCJKsc-Medium.otf"/></font>>> <font weight="bold"><font-data otf="NotoSansCJK
sc-Bold.otf"/></font>>> <font weight="800"><font-data otf="NotoSansCJKsc-Black.otf"/></font>>> </font-family>>> </font-group>>> </fonts>>>>> Now, a few points of interest here.>> The <fonts> section contains the overall set of <fonts> available to>> RenderX. It has an attribute "xml:base" that instructs RenderX to look>> inside the "fonts/" directory for all fonts *where explicit paths are not>> specified*.>> I created a "Noto/" directory under that directory so I add an "xml:base" to>> my <font-group> that points to this directory.>> Now, all the files in that directory can be accessed by relative paths.>> In other words ... I have a file under the RenderX installation as>> "fonts/Noto/NotoSansCJKsc-Thin.otf".>>>> Also note the font-weight's.>> Noto fonts (for ideographic languages) could be provided in several weights>> like Thin, Light, DemiLight, etc.>> So, in XSL FO/RenderX terms we have:>>>> Thin = 100>> Light = 200>> DemiLight = 300>> Normal or Regular = 400 (or no weight speci
fied)>> Medium = 500>> Bold = 700 (or "bold" specified for font-weight in XSL FO)>> Black = 800>>>> So the above "xep.xml" fragment maps all of the various possible weights>> that Google fonts provides. Of course, you do not have to use (or allow>> people to use) all of these. They are designed correctly as individual font>> files. So each has to be handled separately and included separately. More on>> this at the end.>>>> 3) Format documents referencing the fonts you specify.>>>> You specify the font-family (at least) and in this case also the font-weight>> to cause the font selected. You would use the <font-family> @name in>> "xep.xml" to reference it.>> So for example, here's a bit of FO that would cause all of the above fonts>> to be used:>>>> <fo:block-container font-family="NotoSansCJKsc">>> <fo:block>Chinese Sample using>> NotoSansCJKsc</fo:block>>> <fo:block space-before="6pt">> font-weight="100">大橋全長
千六百八十三點五八五米，其中主橋長六百三十六點六>> 米。主橋為雙塔雙預應力混凝土邊主梁斜拉橋。主塔呈鑽石型，高一百0六點九米，塔>> 的上方套紅鐫刻江澤民題寫的橋名。雙主塔通過一百七十六根斜拉索承載橋面。主橋橋>> 面寬二十九點八米；橋下水位通航淨高為二十四米，可通行三千吨級的輪船。>> </fo:block>>> <fo:block space-before="6pt">> font-weight="200">大橋全長二千六百八十三點五八五米，其中主橋長六百三十六點六>> 米。主橋為雙塔雙預應力混凝土邊主梁斜拉橋。主塔呈鑽石型，高一百0六點九米，塔>> 的上方套紅鐫刻江澤民題寫的橋名。雙主塔通過一百七十六根斜拉索承載橋面。主橋橋>> 面寬二十九點八米；橋下水位通航淨高為二十四米，可通行三千吨級的輪船。>> </fo:block>>> <fo:block space-before="6pt">> font-weig
ht="300">大橋全長二千六百八十三點五八五米，其中主橋長六百三十六點六>> 米。主橋為雙塔雙預應力混凝土邊主梁斜拉橋。主塔呈鑽石型，高一百0六點九米，塔>> 的上方套紅鐫刻江澤民題寫的橋名。雙主塔通過一百七十六根斜拉索承載橋面。主橋橋>> 面寬二十九點八米；橋下水位通航淨高為二十四米，可通行三千吨級的輪船。>> </fo:block>>> <fo:block space-before="6pt">大橋全長二千六>> 百八十三點五八五米，其中主橋長六百三十六點六米。主橋為雙塔雙預應力混凝土邊主>> 梁斜拉橋。主塔呈鑽石型，高一百0六點九米，塔的上方套紅鐫刻江澤民題寫的橋名。>> 雙主塔通過一百七十六根斜拉索承載橋面。主橋橋面寬二十九點八米；橋下水位通航淨>> 高為二十四米，可通行三千吨級的輪船。</fo:block>>> <fo:block space-before="6pt">> font-w
eight="500">大橋全長二千六百八十三點五八五米，其中主橋長六百三十六點六>> 米。主橋為雙塔雙預應力混凝土邊主梁斜拉橋。主塔呈鑽石型，高一百0六點九米，塔>> 的上方套紅鐫刻江澤民題寫的橋名。雙主塔通過一百七十六根斜拉索承載橋面。主橋橋>> 面寬二十九點八米；橋下水位通航淨高為二十四米，可通行三千吨級的輪船。>> </fo:block>>> <fo:block space-before="6pt">> font-weight="bold">大橋全長二千六百八十三點五八五米，其中主橋長六百三十六點>> 六米。主橋為雙塔雙預應力混凝土邊主梁斜拉橋。主塔呈鑽石型，高一百0六點九米，>> 塔的上方套紅鐫刻江澤民題寫的橋名。雙主塔通過一百七十六根斜拉索承載橋面。主橋>> 橋面寬二十九點八米；橋下水位通航淨高為二十四米，可通行三千吨級的輪船。>> </fo:block>>> <fo:block spa
ce-before="6pt">> font-weight="800">大橋全長二千六百八十三點五八五米，其中主橋長六百三十六點六>> 米。主橋為雙塔雙預應力混凝土邊主梁斜拉橋。主塔呈鑽石型，高一百0六點九米，塔>> 的上方套紅鐫刻江澤民題寫的橋名。雙主塔通過一百七十六根斜拉索承載橋面。主橋橋>> 面寬二十九點八米；橋下水位通航淨高為二十四米，可通行三千吨級的輪船。>> </fo:block>>> </fo:block-container>>>>>>> That's all there is to it. Get a font, store it somewhere and add it to the>> configuration. Then add text and make sure you tell XEP (through XSL FO) to>> use that particular font.>>>> Now, some specific hints on fonts.>>>> I love (and hate) the Noto fonts above. Why both?>> Love: Well, they provide great coverage of all the characters. If you are>> producing technical documentation then great, this is a great use of these>> fonts.>> Hate: They are HUGE (15MB file) and very large even wh
en subsetted and>> embedded. I would not necessarily use them to print 100,000 invoices, I>> would use them to do a technical manual.>>>> The little text above with fonts embedded and subsetted is a CRAZY 8 MB.>> Insane! The same exact document with Simsun font (which only would have one>> weight) is only 32kb.>> And If I format that simple little document above which access the 7 fonts>> listed (15mb each) for the simple characters in it, it takes 20 seconds to>> format.>>>> We had another example where a customer wanted to use "Arial Unicode" font.>> This font file is 37MB and is copyrighted. They were creating letters and>> were using "Arial Unicode" to select a specific bullet character they liked.>> The "Arial Unicode" copyright notice that is required to be inserted when>> embedding the font is about 250kb alone so that a simple letter with one>> bullet is 300kb/file. The processing time to process each document was about>> 3 seconds.>> I selected a similar bullet from "ZapfDingbats". The results were
12kb file>> size and 12 documents processed per second. Yes, 3 seconds per document went>> to 12 documents per second. A "slight" improvement.>>>> So, try to use a tight, controlled font -- only what you need for a>> particular application. The smallest font file possible that has all the>> glyphs you need.>>>> Kevin Brown>> RenderX>>>> _______________________________________________>> (*) To unsubscribe, please visit http://lists.renderx.com/mailman/options/xep-support>> (*) By using the Service, you expressly agree to these Terms of Service http://w>> ww.renderx.com/terms-of-service.html>>
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Received on Wed Mar 4 10:56:45 2015
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