GDK_FONT_XFTFONT

[Keith Packard <keithp keithp com>]

I've added a third enum to the the kinds of fonts gdk exposes to 
applications.  The abstraction is already sufficient for many applications 
to operate quite nicely; making it official for Gtk+ 2.n would allow 
application developers to prepare their code for this condition.

Yes, this change obviously breaks many application assumptions about how 
fonts work in Gtk.  I don't know any alternative that will eliminate 
server-side fonts from Gnome; the only perfectly compatible system is one 
which never changes.

To protect code which is unprepared for a third alternative, I suggest that
the application be able to force the library to skip the Xft code when 
opening fonts.  In my current patch, I control it with an environment 
variable (export GDK_XFT=0 to disable Xft text).

With this and Pango support for Xft, I've been able to eliminate ugly text 
from the Gtk+ 2.0 apps on my screen.

Keith Packard        XFree86 Core Team        Compaq Cambridge Research Lab
(happily using xchat with AA text now)