Font tests

The font tests check if PDF.js can read font data correctly. For validation the ttx tool (from the Python fonttools library) is used that can convert font data to an XML format that we can easily use for assertions in the tests. In the font tests we let PDF.js read font data and pass the PDF.js-interpreted font data through ttx to check its correctness. The font tests are successful if PDF.js can successfully read the font data and ttx can successfully read the PDF.js-interpreted font data back, proving that PDF.js does not apply any transformations that break the font data.

Running the font tests

The font tests are run on GitHub Actions using the workflow defined in .github/workflows/font_tests.yml, but it is also possible to run the font tests locally. The current stable versions of the following dependencies are required to be installed on the system:

  • Python 3
  • fonttools (see https://pypi.org/project/fonttools and https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools)

The recommended way of installing fonttools is using pip in a virtual environment because it avoids having to do a system-wide installation and therefore improves isolation, but any other way of installing fonttools that makes ttx available in the PATH environment variable also works.

Using the virtual environment approach the font tests can be run locally by creating and sourcing a virtual environment with fonttools installed in it before running the font tests:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install fonttools
gulp fonttest