Re: spacing around text ...

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Peter Sojan wrote:
> > This is a problem in computing the bounding boxes for the Gtk fonts.  It
> > is much lessened by using FreeType (which is also prettier).  I believe
> > the
>
> I installed freetype and newly compiled dia. I have to say font rendering
> looks VERY nice now :-) The bounding box problem is also gone. However
> some issues:
>
>  - how do I configure dia/freetype to find my old type-1 fonts (they
>  arent there any more)!?  

Make sure the dirs are included in the X font path (and no, I can't read
them over the network, X doesn't pass font files, but it will tell me the
font dirs).

>  - are there any expiriences with exporting to EPS (especially with TT
>  fonts) ? 

It's in there.  The whole font is dumped, which can be rather large,
especially for TT fonts.

>  - in which overall state is freetype support? A first look at it show's
>  redrawing aretefacts when moving text around (no problem in general),
>  and the kerning of the glyphs seem somewhat broken (overlapping glyphs
>  ..)

The rendering is better if you use antialiasing (ignore the warning, I
believe that is fixed -- does anybody *know*?).  I have kerning turned off
right now, as the bbox problems were compounded by it.  

Basically, freetype is there and works mostly better than GTK fonts.  Font
output is crude, and the non-antialiased rendering draws a box around each
glyph (because GTK doesn't do alpha).  The bbox calculations are not
perfect for fonts with glyph bbox != advance.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?