Re: Re[2]: Fonts

[John Cupitt <jcupitt gmail com>]

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 17:06:49 +0100, Iago Rubio <iago rubio hispalinux es> wrote:
> Functions may be simpler, but what about font descriptions ?
>
> "-*-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1"
>
> It's not too friendly, is it?
>
> "Helvetica Bold 12 pt" sounds much better.

Yes, this is a good point. With Pango you can, for example, ask for
"sans 12" and get the "best" sans-serif font at that point size. With
the old gdkfont you had to have special magic for each platform and
even each X server version if you wanted to be able to pick a good
looking font.

(I can still remember the horror I felt when I realised what my
application looked like on solaris, where only certain very specific
fonts at certain pointsizes did not look frightful ... though solaris
is much better now).

It also makes portability to win32 far simpler. The lastest gtks
extend pango to do labels at angles and cool stuff like that. And you
get high quality antialiasing for free. And since pango font rendering
is (generally) client-side, you get the same fonts in your app as you
see on the screen, making accurate printing possible.

John