Re: TrueType and Gnome

[nelson media mit edu (Nelson Minar)]

Eric Kidd <eric.kidd@pobox.com> writes:

>A really sane approach would be:
> * Require a font server for TrueType fonts.
> * Provide lots of support for non-TrueType fonts.
> * Know how to make use of TrueType fonts if they are available.

Just so we're all on the same page, do we all agree that Gnome *must*
work on systems that have no TrueType support at all? There's no
reason it can't (afterall, it works now). I'm just suggesting that it
would be good if Gnome could do something more sane if TrueType is
around.

>Quite frankly, X's font support sucks so bad it hurts. The lack of
>anti-aliasing, the cryptic font selection dialogs, and the obscure
>font installation procedures add up to a dismal user experience. I'd
>love to see some way to clean this up without breaking compatibility
>with all the other X servers out there.

I agree entirely. But as Todd Lewis suggested, I think there's no way
to do that without the agreement of some other X server vendors. We
could maybe just do this as an XFree-only effort, but it's not clear
if that would take hold. I'm also a bit wary of adding yet another
major piece of work to the Gnome plate.

An X server extension is a nice idea, though. Windows and Mac both
have anti-aliased fonts, it'd sure be nice if Unix could too :-~ But
designing an interface so  that every application doesn't have to have
two versions of font code (one for servers with the extension, another
for servers without) would be difficult.