Actual location of True Type font files for fonts in Font Suitcases under Mac OS X 10.4.

Keith Kaneda kaneda at JHU.EDU
Wed Nov 8 14:26:26 PST 2006


Hello List,

   I recently installed the MapServer 4.10.0 cgi binaries for OS X on a 
dual 2.0 GHz PowerPC G5 system running OS X 10.4.8  and started working 
through the exercises from Bill Kropla's "Beginning MapServer: Open Source 
GIS Development" book.  When trying to work through several map examples 
which use True Type fonts, I would keep getting the error message similar 
to the following:

msGetLabelSize(): TrueType Font error. Requested font (arialbd) not found.

This would occur when I would try to point to the OS X installed fonts in 
/Library/Fonts or ~/Library/Fonts in my font.list file, e.g.

                 arial      /Library/Fonts/Arial

The pathname I listed above points to a file of Kind "Font Suitcase". 
In the case of the Arial font, the Finder lists the size of this file as 
312 KB.   When you open the font in Font Book, it is possible to see which 
files are included in the Font Suitcase and by choosing Preview | Show 
Font Info, you can confirm that a font (e.g. Arial Regular) is indeed a 
TrueType font.  Font Book lists the location of the font as either 
/Library/Fonts or ~/Library/Fonts. When I go to the /Library/Fonts and 
~/Library/Fonts directories using the Terminal, the font files of type 
"Font Suitcase" have a file size of 0!   Many of the fonts in the 
example Font Set file on the MapServer web site (e.g. Arial family, 
Georgia family, Times family, Trebuchet-MS, Verdana family) seem to be in 
Font Suitcase files under OS X 10.4.

   I was finally able to complete several of these exercises by using the 
folder of Vera family fonts bundled in the MapServer 4.6 tutorial so 
that error wasn't caused by an erroneous pathname in the FONTSET 
statement.  My question is this - where do the .ttf files for True Type 
fonts listed as type/kind Font Suitcase actually reside under OS X 10.4? 
If someone is succssfully running MapServer under OS X 10.4 and using the 
standard True Type fonts installed by OS X 10.4, I would appreciate it if 
you could post or send me a copy of your font.list file.


Thanks for any info,
-Keith

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