🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1e2b38c.0404270234.1e7c0053@posting.google.com>,
goldnet@goldnet.sk (GoldNet) wrote:

> Greetings
> 
> I seek a font specialist freelancer for a specialized project. 
> 
> Required knowledge
> - profound knowledge of fonts and glyphs, their structure, handling
> and usage
> - ideally some knowledge of the internals of PDF especially related to
> the storage of glyphs and fonts
> 
> Goals
> 1) Develop a font comparison module that enables our software to
> automatically detect for a font used in an imported PDF file the most
> approximate font from a font library.
> 2) Optimize the storage and usage of fonts in our proprietary file
> format and its viewer software.
> 3) Long-term perhaps develop even our own rendering engine.
>  
> We program this in Smalltalk. However, knowledge of Smalltalk is NOT
> required for this particular project.
>  
> Please drop me a line for further details.
> 
> Ramon Bartschat
> goldnet@goldnet.sk

It's no small project. Similarities between fonts should be addressed by
the panose charactistics which are parft fo any font information block.
Unfortunately, the standard was developped when there was only a small
group of font designers and developers, and since then, gazillions of fonts
are populating the Internet. Most of them make no use at all of this.

The endeavour you describe is probably possible between a couple of
comparable font catalogs, it looks a lot less feasible on a large scale.
Such an atempt, although sometimes extremely loose and sometimes quite
unappropriate, ahs also be made by different substitution tables
implemented within Windows, and probably Adobe software.

In fact, you seem quite appropriately be using Smalltalk to build an expert
system drawing on a typographical expert's knowledge. Seems like a lifelong
project.

Good luck !

-- 
Mitch
http://www.FontMenu.com http://www.MICR-Fonts.com http://www.SchoolFonts.com