CUPS 1.4.3 && printing UTF-8 text

Matthias Apitz guru at unixarea.de
Sun Aug 8 06:45:11 PDT 2010


Helge Blischke wrote:

> I've set up a virtual Linux (Peppermint Linux, which is based on, and said
> to be compatible to, recent Ubuntu, and has CUPS 1.4.3 by default), loaded
> the CUPS 1.4.3 sources, compiled it, and replaced the installed texttops
> filter by my compiled one (in order to rule out any side effects caused by
> the modifications Ubuntu is known to make).
> Tests with this confiruration reviealed three things:

Thanks for all your work!

> 
> (1) the utf-8 file
> ----------------------
> The start and end values for the Hebrew and Arabic scripts were
> errouneously separated by a "-" instead of a space (which I overlooked
> until I orchestrated the texttops filter with some debugging statements -
> shame on me).

Shame on me too. I've cut&paste the value '0590-05FF' from some web page
describing script names and code point ranges, without realizing the '-'
sign :-( One better edit files with keyboard and not with the mouse.

> And, the PostScript procset generated by the texttops filter assumes that
> the font filename is equal to the PostScript fontname, So I renamed the
> installed .pfa files to the names without the .pfa extension.

But why the other scripts, like Greek, are working without renaming the
files?

> 
> I attach the modified utf-8 file for you.
> 
> (2) the glyph names
> -----------------------------
> The texttops filter uses the glyphlist file which maps the unicode code
> points to the glyph names as specified (as far I could check) in Adobe's
> AGLNF (Adobe Glyph List for New Fonts). The Gnu FreeMono family, on the
> other hand, uses "historic" glyph names for the Hebrew and Arabic glyphs
> which obviously have their origin in the pre-unicode area.
> An example:
> the codepoint 05DC is mapped to afii57676 in both the cups's psglyphs file
> and the adobe glyphlist, but the latter lists the aliases "lamed" and
> "lamedhebrew" in addition, and this last one is the glyph name used by the
> font.
> 
> (3) font embedding
> ---------------------------
> My self-compiled texttops filter embedded the (complete) used fonts into
> the PostScript output, but the file you posted had the fonts not embedded.
> Is there a configure option for not embedding the fonts? (you told me you
> compiled your CUPS from the sources, if I remember correctly).

Will check this tomorrow at work. Right now I have no access to the compiled
CUPS.

> 
> What to do:
> =========
> 
> In the short run, I'd suggest to modify the fonts of the FreeMono family
> to be compliant to the cups psglyphs list. This is best done by
> 1. disassembling the pfa files
> 2. mapping the glyph names to unicode numbers according the AGL
> 3. mapping the unicode numbers to the glyph names according to psglyphs
> 4. reassembling the files
> (1 and 4 by t1disasm and t1asm, respectively, from the t1utils suite; 2
> and 3 perhaps by a suitable Perl or Python script, I'd suggest).
> 
> The other way round - to modify the texttops filter to accept the aliases
> as specified in the AGL - would require quite a big modification which, I
> suspect, sould be some 3 to 4 weeks developing and testing.

The (my) .pfa files are derived from the FreeMono TTF files and I have had
posted a thread there before I got Greek to work:

https://savannah.gnu.org/support/index.php?107446

I will ask Steve if the Savannah GNU project could allign the FreeMono files
with the glyphlist and AGLNF.

Thanks

        Matthias





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