Re: Pango Backend Abstraction

[Alex Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2001, Hans Breuer wrote:

> Hi Owen et al.,
> 
> Sorry to bring up just another api issue this late, but
> I fail to see another solution:
> 
> Recent Cvs Gimp Text Tool directly uses the FT2 backend to render
> into a bitmap. Because there are other backends, IMO we need
> a Pango Backend Abstraction to avoid special caseing on the
> application level.
I fail to see the problem. The FT2 backend should build and run on win32.
 
> I hacked up a solution which should work on any platform with
> GModule support, but is currently only fully implemented and
> tested for the win32 backend. (Porting to FT2 should be very
> easy, because the special new 'render to bitmap' function
> is modeled after the FT2 implementation)

Whe reason to use a specific backend is presumably that you're interested 
in particular features of the backend. In the case of FT2 you have 
better control over what fonts and type of font is used, you can use 
the freetye API to do specific things, and you can use the actual truetype 
fonts themself to do stuff (such as embedding them in print jobs or other 
output).

Having a pango_give_me_a_random_unknown_context_so_my_app_can_break() 
function sounds like a bad idea. There is also the problem of the 
different environments needed for the backends. The X backends needs a 
display, and if i write a console-based app i cannot use that. The FT2 
backend needs it's fonts configured, or it will break, so randomly 
choosing that can kill your app, etc.

/ Alex