[mapserver-dev] Inline FONT references

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Andy Colson wrote:
> On 12/08/2009 04:36 PM, Jeff McKenna wrote:
>> Devs,
>>
>> I'm giving the QGIS dev team feedback on the MapServer Export tool
>> (which has ability to export 'views' from QGIS to a mapfile). One thing
>> they need to do is to export fonts for labeled features into a mapfile.
>> They are wondering if there is any way possible to have an inline font
>> in the mapfile (similar to how we can have an inline symbol, not
>> referenced to an external symbol file). Since I believe the answer is
>> 'no, can't be done', can we suggest some ways to help the QGIS devs
>> through this issue?
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> -jeff
>>
> 
> 
> How about a map level default label.  Then inside classes/etc you can 
> use 'label default'.  Or something like that.

I like the idea of inline font resources.
I have moved to mostly using inline symbol resources in my mapfiles.

I could see something like:

FONTDEFS
   "arial"        "/path/to/arial.ttf"
   "arial-bold"   "/path/to/arialbd.ttf"
END

The one advantage to having all the define in a fontset.txt file a 
referencing it is that if you move you fonts you only have to update one 
file and all your mapfiles read it. Using the above would require you 
editing all your mapfiles and some sites have a lot of them. But that 
said there is no reason both could not be supported.

-Steve W