[Gllug] Wide availability of fronts

[Alain Williams]

On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 09:33:33AM +0000, Chris Bell wrote:
> On Fri 29 Jun, Alain Williams wrote:
> > 
> > There is a project that I am starting that will end up producing documents that:
> > 
> > * are going to have a long life
> > 
> > * are accessible on a wide variety of computers (operating systems)
> > 
> > OK: OpenDocument format (ODF) is the no brainer for the editable format, with
> > HTML and PDF as printable formats.
> > 
> > What fonts to use is my question, ie which fonts are available everywhere ?
> > Fortunately all that is needed is one font with italic & bold varients.
> > 
> 
> 
> Plain ASCII text?

No. I should have explained a bit more.

The project is to produce up-to-date versions of some acts of UK parliament,
eg 1989 Children Act with amendments from Family Law Act 1996, etc, etc and
freely publish these on the web as PDF, HTML and editable form (ODF).

This will be done by several of us, we need to pass documents around for editing,
checking, ... Most will use some sort of MS Windows, but there will also be Linux
and maybe Apple. Preferably installing as little extra stuff on helpers' PCs.

I wany to avoid any problem with the word processing side, and create some templates
to make this easy; with some simple rules, eg: we always use font XXX, and in
headers: bold, point size, .... OpenOffice styles make that easy.

I am not a word processing expert, but what I see is that there is a drop down box
where I can choose the font that I wish to use - this choice is by name of font.
I want to be able to send this .odf to someone else and have them also see the font
that we use in their drop down box.

Easy I thought: Times Roman and Helvetica are available everywhere... I checked
and was surprised to not find them.

Someone mentioned Liberation fonts. Yes: they might be equivalent, but they have
different names -- surely the names are the important thing when it comes to
displaying the glyphs ? If the viewing machine (could be anything anywhere - ie
Joe Public's box) doesn't have it installed ... what will it do ?


There is also the matter of creating PDF & HTML output. The of PDFs can change a
lot depending on what font you use, it seems that if it is a postscript font
the PDF is smaller. Another reason for wanting to use Times Roman or Helvetica.

-- 
Alain Williams
Linux Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  http://www.phcomp.co.uk/
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php
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