Bugzilla Bug 40808

Ghostscript relies on the GS_FONTPATH environment variable to locate its fonts.
However, some font packages (perhaps most) do not configure GS_FONTPATH and so
installed fonts are not found by ghostscript without manual configuration by
the user.

The attached patches configure GS_FONTPATH for three font packages:
  media-fonts/corefonts
  media-fonts/freefonts
  media-fonts/urw-fonts

(I don't have anything against the other font packages. It's just that these
are the ones I currently use.)

Additionally, a patch is required to env-update in
/usr/lib/portage/pym/portage.py to recognize GS_FONTPATH as a "special" that
may accumulate colon-separated paths. (Without env-update patched, GS_FONTPATH
will merely take the last assigned value.)

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Created an attachment (id=25165) [edit]
Patches corefonts-1-r1.ebuild

Patches corefonts-1-r1.ebuild to assign GS_FONTPATH in
/etc/env.d/40gs-corefonts

Created an attachment (id=25166) [edit]
Patches freefonts-0.10-r2.ebuild

Patches freefonts-0.10-r2.ebuild to assign GS_FONTPATH in
/etc/env.d/40gs-freefonts

Created an attachment (id=25167) [edit]
Patches urw-fonts-2.0-r1.ebuild

Patches urw-fonts-2.0-r1.ebuild to assign GS_FONTPATH in
/etc/env.d/40gs-urw-fonts

Created an attachment (id=25168) [edit]
Patches env-update

Patches env-update in /usr/lib/portage/pym/portage.py by adding GS_FONTPATH to
the list of "special" environment variables which accumulate colon separated
paths.

Ghostscript apparently isn't smart enough to use fontconfig?

Apparently.

I'm no expert on either, but I did find mention in the FontConfig newsgroup as to the reason: the information FontConfig caches and provides does not include the font's PostScript name. Refer to http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/forum/2003-April/001114.html

Now that you mention it, it would be nice if ghostscript used FontConfig. CUPS and OpenOffice, too. I'm using an inkjet printer with no built-in fonts, and it would simplify matters if OO, CUPS, and Ghostscript all agreed on which fonts I have built into my system.

I'm dreaming. I used to use a Mac. But maybe FontConfig could get us there.

A solution that I've found after some hours of searching is adding the
FontConfig path (/etc/fonts) to the environment variable GS_LIB.
Now ghostscript seems to work together with fontconfig (although I'm 
no expert in these things) and recognizes fonts in the 
Fontmap file.

The fix suggested in Comment #7 did not work for me.

This is what I did. Please tell me if I missed something.

$ unset GS_FONTPATH
$ export GS_LIB=/etc/fonts
$ cd /usr/share/ghostscript/7.07/lib
$ gs prfont.ps
GS>/Becker DoFont
  ("Becker" is a Type 1 font in /usr/share/fonts/freefont)

Result:
Can't find (or can't open) font file /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/Becker.
Can't find (or can't open) font file Becker.
Substituting font Courier for Becker.

Ghostscript then displays the character map for Courier.


With /usr/share/fonts/freefont added to GS_FONTPATH, the prfont script correctly displays the character map for the Becker font.

I am using app-text/ghostscript-7.07.1-r1, compiled with USE Flags: X cups -cjk

Redhat patched ESP ghostscript 7.0.7 for fontconfig.  Take a look at:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/kde-redhat/fedora/SOURCES/ghostscript-7.07-fontconfig-rh-2.patch?rev=1.3&view=auto

...I had to switch to AFPL because ESP was crashing during pstopdf conversions.  But I'm having the font problem as well.

added the redhat patch to ghostscript-7.07.1-r4

you also need to add a pkgcongfig buildtime dep

I wonder why this is behind a truetype useflag btw ?

added the pkgconfig dep. i used the truetype useflag because that's what
fontconfig does, adds support for truetype fonts, doesn't it?

(next time please reopen the bug)

not really, fontconfig is just a way to easily select/handle fonts & it happens
to depend on freetype which supports a whole range of font formats (not just
ttf). In practice i believe this patch -if used- should be applied
unconditionally to the ebuild, this would be better for the overall consistenty
of how gentoo handles fonts (that is what comment #5 was about).

The ghostscript fonts should also be moved to the /usr/share/fonts location
eventually.

i added a new revision that applies the fontconfig patch by default and moves
the fonts to /usr/share/fonts/ghostscript