It would be nice if we could use more kinds of fonts in LibreOffice, specifically Type 1 fonts. About 9 years ago, we officially declared no support for Type 1 fonts: https://git.libreoffice.org/core/+/48304cb5b4d8df71463837e2e48aa7c4d9594df9^! ... because they weren't supported by CommonSalLayout. I'm not sure if that means they we were handling them imperfectly or not really at all, but be that as it may - Type 1 are useful and legitimate fonts, and we should support them. That is to say, not undo that change, but rather make sure that our code, top to bottom and through-and-through, supports them. This would be particularly useful when opening PDF files for editing, because those are more likely to contain Type-1 font glyphs.
I commented on it in bug 104701 comment 16 (see also the other comments in that report): > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_fonts#Type_1 "They are not > supported in the Windows GDI+, WPF or DirectWrite APIs" > > MS Office dropped Type 1 support in 2013, with the only way to use them > being an awkward workaround: > https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/8c15a4ea-ac83-40bd- > 8800-d3532e1dee07/office-2013-and-type-1-fonts-not- > supported?forum=officesetupdeploy > > The writing has been on the wall for Type 1 fonts for a long time. > > Users of Type 1 fonts have been forced to jump through hoops for years: > https://forums.adobe.com/message/7382830#7382830 Adobe principal scientist > commenting in 2015: "it is really a good time to accelerate migration to > cross-platform OpenType fonts." See the ESC decision: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2016-October/075652.html * Bitmap fonts on Windows (Michael) + no good physical font API on Windows + DirectWrite provides one. + doesn't work with Bitmap Fonts. + Office 2013 dropped bitmap / Type1 fonts and more long ago. + Biting us with Harfbuzz in some cases. + https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103514 + an issue for the WinXP support (Cloph) + Harfbuzz doesn't support that. (and will not support Type1 fonts) + 5.3 will be the last with current rendering + see no point in also support bitmap fonts in 5.4 + thought Khaled pushed a patch to make it work on WinXP (Caolan) + but happy to loose bitmap fonts. + we get a fallback font anyway (Michael) => abandoning bitmap / Type 1 fonts etc. if not DirectWrite supported in future. Photoshop switched to Harfbuzz in 2023, so also dropped support for Type 1 fonts: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/announcement-end-of-support-postscript-type-1-fonts.html There is some discussion in this issue from 2019: https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues/1682 Behdad asked, if Adobe was interested in contributing to adding support and an Adobe rep said: "Adobe sees non-cross platform font format Type 1 as a legacy font technology and is not enthusiastic about supporting it in new endeavors like HB. Instead we see OpenType (TT or CFF, now CFF2) as the future." So I don't see it as a worthy investment at this point as everyone else wants to move on.
Yep, Type 1 had to go with move to Harfbuzz at 5.3, all support for Type 1 fonts (as well as bitmap fonts) was stripped out to move completely to hb. No going back, and have more pressing OTF feature demands, e.g. full support of Variable (OTVF) fonts, or getting beyond RBIBI limits of MS Windows GDI. => WF