> .... The recommended solution would be to find a font repair/editing
> program and have it read the font and then output it again. Most programs
> for editing font should generate the missing data, or more likely actually
> remove the unnecessary and broken first Unicode character mapping table.

What tool would you recomment for this repair process.  I've always been 
interested in messing around with font files, but have never had the time 
nor the need to do so.  I guess I will "make" the time, under the 
circumstances.

I'm not really too concerned with the specific font I've mentioined for this 
example.  It was a free download and didn't cost me anything.  There are 
other fonts with similar problems, for which I've actually paid money, that 
I might want to use for a project in POV-Ray.  Those I will take the time 
and effort to try to repair, if I can get the right tools.

Your helpful recommendations are greatly appreciated.

- Patrick


"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote in message 
news:44ae1f4b$1@news.povray.org...
> Patrick Hagerty wrote:
>> Well, just to test exactly that theory, I used it in several applications 
>> to
>> make sure it behaved appropriately before I ever posted anything here.
>
> This "testing" is in essence meaningless as most applications use the
> operating system provided means to display all their text. Hence, they 
> have
> no control over the rendering of any font.
>
> However, as POV-Ray needs to ray-trace fonts, it cannot use any font 
> drawing
> any operating system supplies. Consequently, it needs to read the font 
> file,
> and then extract all the information contained therein that "regular"
> applications never even see because they just the the operating system to
> draw the text.
>
>> I've not seen anything slow about it or the other fonts I've had the 
>> problem
>> with,
>
> The problem with the one specific font mentioned in this thread
> (01-01-00.ttf) is rather simple. It contains a total of three tables
> mapping* the characters' geometry (aka glyphs) to actual character numbers
> (ASCII/Unicode). Two for Unicode, of which one is defective and does 
> indeed
> lack the characters as reported. Most likely (this is a guess) your
> operating system deals with the problem by searching through all other
> tables to find something usable - which not only is slow, but also should
> *never* be necessary for a valid font file.
>
> Due to these problems (the font file actually has other problems, such as
> incorrect size specifications for some glyphs), POV-Ray cannot render your
> font. The recommended solution would be to find a font repair/editing
> program and have it read the font and then output it again. Most programs
> for editing font should generate the missing data, or more likely actually
> remove the unnecessary and broken first Unicode character mapping table.
>
> Thorsten, POV-Team
>
> * For TrueType fonts, this table is commonly known as "cmap".

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