[MacPorts] #30745: xdvipdfmx not able to use /System/Library/*.dfont fonts, freetype --with-old-mac-fonts involved

[MacPorts]

#30745: xdvipdfmx not able to use /System/Library/*.dfont fonts, freetype --with-
old-mac-fonts involved
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 Reporter:  pguyot@…             |       Owner:  macports-tickets@…                   
     Type:  defect               |      Status:  new                                  
 Priority:  Normal               |   Milestone:                                       
Component:  ports                |     Version:  2.0.1                                
 Keywords:                       |        Port:  texlive-bin freetype                 
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Comment(by pguyot@…):

 >> "Old Mac fonts" are those having a resource fork. As far as I remember,
 Tiger was the last time Apple shipped any of those; since Leopard, it has
 shipped fonts using the data fork only. If tdvipdfmx checks for freetype's
 ability to load resource-fork-based fonts as some kind of indication of
 whether it can work at all on a Mac, then that sounds like a bug in
 tdvipdfmx that needs to be fixed.
 > I don't think that's quite correct -- freetype's --without-old-mac-fonts
 appears to disable all of the Mac-specific API, including
 FT_GetFilePath_From_Mac_ATS_Name, which doesn't seem resource-fork-
 specific. That's what xdvipdfmx is looking for.

 Not passing --with-old-mac-fonts to freetype does more than just dropping
 support for resource-based fonts. It entirely disables dependency on OS X
 frameworks, including the {{{FT_GetFilePath_From_Mac_ATS_Name}}} function
 which is not resource-fork specific. In fact, it removes all Mac-specific
 code. The real issue with gd2 was not the use of these functions, it was
 that freetype is linked with a framework whenever --with-old-mac-fonts is
 passed. This is different but not totally unrelated to
 [http://openradar.appspot.com/7209349 radr://problem/7209349] : strange
 things happen when a framework is first loaded within a non-main thread.
 The [http://openradar.appspot.com/7209349 radr://problem/7209349] bug is
 not fixed in 10.6.8 (did not test it in 10.7 yet), but the gd2 bug may
 have been fixed in 10.6. Hence my question about the current state of gd2
 and bug #15909 because passing --with-old-mac-fonts on OS X seems a good
 idea (using Mac-specific code provides better handling of Mac fonts) and
 it is probably what other distributions of texlive do.

 > The functions it needs are simple enough that we could probably build
 them into xdvipdfmx without too much trouble, though...
 > Does this patch solve your problem? (patch is against port dir texlive-
 bin; make sure you're using the regular freetype without --with-old-mac-
 fonts, and build texlive-bin +atsui)

 I thought about providing just the functions indeed, yet tests I have just
 conducted with your patch show it is not sufficient.

 For the record, I do not think it is related to the ATSUI problem of
 texlive. ATSUI is deprecated and most functions are just no longer
 available on 10.7 and on 10.5+ 64 bits. However, the ATS functions
 xdvipdfmx and Freetype need/use have no equivalent in CoreText and
 therefore are still available, although not recommended, even in 10.7
 according to
 [http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/documentation/Carbon/reference/ATS/ATS.pdf].

 Your patch compiles fine (generates a 64bits binary) without +atsui, even
 if the line you added within the "if {![variant_isset atsui]}" block is
 removed (i.e. xdvipdfmx is linked against ApplicationServices).

 However, passing --with-old-mac-fonts to freetype does more than just
 providing the couple of functions that was missing to xdvipdfmx. It
 provides an alternate version of FT_New_Face which, I believe, is able to
 look into dfont files beyond the first sfnt with the help of parameter
 {{{face_index}}}.

 I did several tests with a simple tex file that uses *.dfont fonts
 available in 10.6.8 in /System/Library/. You'll find attached the (newer)
 diff to texlive-bin that I used for these tests (allowing a non-atsui
 64bits xdvipdfmx build that links against OS X frameworks) as well as
 several outputs. You'll notice that Courier does not work, but other fonts
 only work in all their styles if Freetype is compiled with --with-old-mac-
 fonts only. The PDFs were generated with {{{xelatex test.tex}}} which
 invokes xdvipdfmx by default.

 After this test, I strongly suggest rehabilitating --with-old-mac-fonts to
 Freetype.

 I wanted to test with +atsui, but texlive-bin currently does not compile
 with +atsui (this should be in another ticket...)

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/30745#comment:7>
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