rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler) (04/21/91)
An MIT X Consortium draft standard for an X Font Service Protocol is now available for Public Review. This draft standard defines a network protocol that X servers can use to obtain fonts, using one or more font servers. In addition, changes to the X Logical Font Description (XLFD) Conventions are being proposed to support naming of scalable fonts and instances of scalable fonts. The objective of this Public Review is to determine if the current draft is acceptable as a Consortium standard. Public Review can result in changes to the draft standard. Public Review of the Font Service Protocol and the XLFD changes are scheduled to end July 20, 1991. The X community is encouraged to review the drafts and submit comments by electronic mail to fonts@expo.lcs.mit.edu Comments sent to other addresses are not guaranteed to be considered. Commentors should take the review process seriously, and should: 1. Identify objectionable functionality and wording in the document. 2. Suggest specific alternative functionality and wording. and most importantly: 3. Provide a rationale for the suggested changes. Commentors should also carefully distinguish between: 1. Problems that they regard as intolerable and that must be corrected before the specification becomes a standard. 2. Aspects that they do not like but could live with for a few years until a future revision of the standard. 3. Additional functionality that they can live without in an initial standard but would like to see in a future revision. A Consortium committee will review the comments and respond to commentors. The following documents are available via anonymous ftp to export.lcs.mit.edu in the directory /pub/DOCS/fonts/ fontserver.text Font Service Protocol in plain text scalable.text XLFD changes in plain text The documents are also available via the archive server at xstuff@expo.lcs.mit.edu. The following items are available, by sending a message with the Subject: line of "send docs <itemname>" and an empty message body: fontserver.text Font Service Protocol in plain text scalable.text XLFD changes in plain text For example, use "send docs fontserver.text" to retrieve the Font Service Protocol document. DO NOT SEND ARCHIVE SERVER REQUESTS TO THE "fonts" ADDRESS! SEND THEM TO THE "xstuff" ADDRESS. Some mailers produce mail headers that are unusable for extracting return addresses. If you use such a mailer, you won't get any response. If you happen to know an explicit path, you can include a line like path foo%bar.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu or path bar!foo!frotz in the body of your message, and the daemon will use it. If you simply cannot obtain these documents from the network, you may request a paper copy by writing to: MIT X Consortium, Room 217 Laboratory for Computer Science 545 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139