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Summary of Search Path Handling

Since the exact handling of search path specifications at the several stages may appear somewhat confusing we shall summarize the exact rules now:

  1. Before Initialization
    Default paths are not yet setup. Each call of one of the T1_Set...() functions described above establishes a completely new respective path. Each call of one of the T1_Add...() functions extends the respective path in the desired manner, or creates a new respective path if previously no path existed.
  2. At the Beginning of the Initialization
    Each path type for which a path had not already been explicitly created using the
    T1_Set...() or T1_Add...() functions receives a default value. This is ``.'' for the file search paths and ./FontDataBase for the font database.
  3. During Initialization
    Each path element read from the configuration file overwrites an existing respective default path but preserves an existing respective explicitly setup path by appending to the latter. The newly setup search path is used to locate files while scanning the font database file(s).
  4. After Inititialization but before the Database is being filled
    At this stage, all T1_Set...() and T1_Add...() functions still work as described under (1). Notice that this phase usually is not accessible when using the standard initialization scheme. It only becomes accessible if no fonts have been added during initialization.
  5. After at least one Font is insterted into the Database
    Once there are fonts in the database, the paths setup up to now must be preserved in any case. Hence, the T1_Set...() may not be called any longer. The T1_Add...() functions extend the current set of search paths. In particular, possibly existing default search path elements, then, are not overwritten any longer because they might have been used before to verify the existance of required files.
A call to T1_AddFontDataBase() will not only append the specified file name to the existing list of databases, but will also immediately locate the fonts specified therein and assign additional font IDs.


next up previous contents index
Next: Bypassing the t1lib File Up: Initialization of t1lib and Previous: Adding Fonts to the   Contents   Index
2005-01-12