Re: Fonts

[Russell Shaw <rjshaw netspace net au>]

Liam R. E. Quin wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-08-02 at 00:16 +1000, Russell Shaw wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> > Does all text in gtk/pango get sent to the X server as ascii, or are bitmaps
> > sent too?
>
> Both, depending on whether client-side core X fonts are used or
> whether client-side fonts are used with Xft.
>
> > If sent as ascii, is it 7-bit, 8-bit, or something longer?
>
> I don't understand this question -- a font is a collection of
> descriptions of outlines, including curves and/or code to draw
> the glyphs as well as other metadata.  Are you asking if the
> instructions to draw an "a" (for example) are sent in ascii over
> the connection to the X server, or are you really trying
> to ask if pango can render non-latin text?  If the latter, yes
> it can, see www.pango.org.  if the former, no, the connection to
> the X server must be 8-bit clean as it's binary data.

I was wandering if every time a gtk app prints some text, the instructions
for each character to print are sent as 1 byte, or 4 bytes like utf-8 or
whatever (eg, 0x61 for 'a') so that the text rendering thing on the server
side knows which glyph to render, or if there are fonts where each *bitmap*
for a character is sent from the client to the server.

> > Does gtk have any control over what renders the fonts at the X server?
> > Is XDrawString used?
>
> pango controls this.  And yes if pango calls XDrawString() then
> XDrawString() will be used. Gdk may also draw text directly,
> without pango, I think.

Is pango running on the client side, or the server side?

A previous post mentioned "font caching". I was wandering if gtk can be
speeded up.

> I hope this helps, but I suspect all I can do is help you to
> phrase your question more precisely, or to describe what you
> are trying to do so people can give a better answer.
>
> Liam