RE: TrueType and Gnome

["Dries, Joseph" <joseph dries lmco com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	nelson@media.mit.edu [SMTP:nelson@media.mit.edu]
> Sent:	Monday, August 24, 1998 11:12 AM
> To:	gnome-list@gnome.org
> Subject:	TrueType and Gnome
> 
> To reiterate, I'm suggesting two possibilities:
> 
> Build a support library for Gnome to use TrueType fonts as X fonts.
> This requires gluing in xfsft until an XFree with TrueType rendering
> comes out, and maybe making an improved font selection widget. Doesn't
> require any serious change to X, and most of the pieces are already
> written.
> 
> Build a library for rendering strings with FreeType, not using X's
> font support at all. This replaces a big chunk of how X works but
> would look really nice.
> 
	Let me reiterate. Linux is not *nix. *BSD is not *nix. Since GNOME
is intended for ALL modern Unix flavors, you cannot, must not, assume that
the X server is XFree. (As is, many Linux distributions have commercial,
non-XFree86 distributions such as Metro-X or AccelX) I should not have to
replace my SunOS, Solaris, IRIX, AIX, or HPUX X servers with XFree86 to get
TrueType font support.

	That said, I agree that building a library (similar to what E does
with fnlib and freetype) that is distributed and built with GNOME will
facilitate the adoption of TrueType fonts on all platforms. This would be
extremely useful, and the newbies would like it. ;)

	-j