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

[William Kyngesburye]

Using Mac suitcase-packaged fonts is a bit tricky.  As you know, a  
suitcase (or other font package such as dfonts) can contain many  
actual font faces, usually the different styles of the font.   
FreeType can read these, but by default only returns the first face  
in the file.  There is no guarantee of the order of the faces in the  
suitcase, and MapServer doesn't have a way to specify a face index or  
name (that would be a nice wish).

TrueType and PostScript fonts can be packaged in many ways in OSX -  
in a suitcase, in a dfont (dfonts are a flat-file replacement for  
suitcases), in an OTF file (usually 1 face, but can contain multiple  
faces), and in a Unix/Windows flat file (ttf/pfa/pfb).  The Microsoft  
fonts that come with OSX and MS Office are all in suitcases.

Your safest bets for MapServer are Unix flat files (.ttf) and single- 
face OTF fonts.  The only ttf fonts that come with OSX are a bunch of  
language fonts.  You'll have to raid a Windows system to get the MS  
ttf versions (you might be able to download them from MS).  You can  
also look around for free fonts (like those Vera fonts you found).   
Or scrounge up some OTF fonts from recent Adobe products.

If you have a font conversion tool, you could also convert the MS  
suitcases to Unix format.

On Nov 8, 2006, at 4:26 PM, Keith Kaneda wrote:

> 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.
>

-----
William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos at kyngchaos.com>
http://www.kyngchaos.com/

"History is an illusion caused by the passage of time, and time is an  
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