Re: Xft version 2 patches for gtk+ and pango

[Keith Packard <keithp keithp com>]

Around 15 o'clock on Feb 19, Owen Taylor wrote:

> I'm very eager to look at these patches. Unfortunately, with the
> GTK+-2.0.0 release 1 week and change off, I'll have to hold my
> horses for a bit.

That's fine; this patch is required to build against current XFree86 CVS, 
but obviously that can wait until after 2.0.0 is out the door; I can 
regenerate the patch once 2.0.0 is stable for people interested in using 
current X bits.

> -FT_Face       pango_xft_font_get_face          (PangoFont *font);
> +FT_Face       pango_xft_font_lock_face         (PangoFont *font);
> +void	      pango_xft_font_unlock_face       (PangoFont *font);
> 
> Is in a portion of the Pango API protected as unstable, and even
> if we need to maintain compatibility, we can provide a compatibility
> pango_xft_font_get_face() that locks the font and leaves it lock.

This is the most serious infraction by the current API -- leaving the face 
locked means that the underlying freetype object can never be freed, not 
even when the font is closed.  I'm willing to fix that part if you're 
willing to add the unlock/lock APIs and make sure no-one "real" is using 
the 'get' API.  It would be really useful if Pango 1.0 exposed the lock/
unlock API, even if the rest of the library is left unchanaged, and even 
if the library still builds against Xft 1.0.

Keith Packard        XFree86 Core Team        Compaq Cambridge Research Lab