Re: GDK_FONT_XFTFONT

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Keith Packard <keithp keithp com> writes:

> 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.

What we decided for GTK+-2.0 is is that we would simply deprecate
GdkFont and keep them working the same way, rather than trying to make
them take advantage of any of the new features of GTK+-2.0.

 GTK+-2.0 programs shouldn't be using GdkFont at all, but rather using
Pango for everything. (The one widget that hasn't been converted over
- GtkText, is there only as a porting aid - you have to define
GTK_ENABLE_BROKEN to get it at all.)

Some programs haven't been converted yet:

 gnome-terminal - it actually mostly access X11 fonts directly, probably
   easiest to switch it over using Xft directly. Complex-text in
   a terminal is a very different proposition than real complex-text
   so Pango is a poor match here.

 xchat - Main text widget hasn't been ported yet; needs a rewrite
  to work in terms of Pango.

But the planned path is definitely to get rid of GdkFont rather than
trying to fix it. 

(It's not just rendering technology -- it doesn't fit into the "new
world" in terms of font naming, character set handling, etc.)

Regards,
                                        Owen