[Pkg-fonts-bugs] Bug#255569: suspicious

[Jan Willem Stumpel]

If you look at the fonts.cache-1 files in the various font
directories, the lines that describe monospace fonts (Courier New,
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, Andale Mono) generally have a "spacing"
value between the "width" and the "foundry" value, e.g. for B.S.V.
Mono:

"VeraMono.ttf" 0 "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:
familylang=en:style=Roman:stylelang=en:slant=0:weight=80:
width=100:spacing=100:foundry=bitstream
          ^^^^^^^^^^^

But FreeMono does not have this:

"FreeMono.ttf" 0 "FreeMono:style=Medium,[...]:
stylelang=xx,ca,cs,de,el,fi,hu,it,nl,pl,ru,sk,sl,vi,eu:fullname=Free
Monospaced:slant=0:weight=80:width=100:foundry=unknown

Not only KDE, also Openoffice thinks that FreeMono is "variable
width" instead of "fixed". If you prepare a small test text
containing paragraphs in FreeMono and Courier New, save it and
unzip it, you'll find a file called content.xml which can be
viewed with e.g. Mozilla. There will be lines describing the font
properties:

<style:font-face style:name="Courier New"
svg:font-family="'Courier New'"
style:font-family-generic="modern" style:font-pitch="fixed"/>

<style:font-face style:name="FreeMono" svg:font-family="FreeMono"
style:font-family-generic="modern" style:font-pitch="variable"/>

So while Courier New is "fixed", FreeMono is "variable". There
must be something in the .ttf file that sets this, but I haven't
yet found out what it is.

Regards, Jan