Very small size fonts [Was: Adjusting width of rendered string]

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On 22 Aug 2003, Keith Packard wrote:
>
> Around 2 o'clock on Aug 22, Lars Clausen wrote:
>
>> Or can a slightly larger font size actually cause a smaller rendered
>> string?
>
> Theoretically, it could, although in practice I've not seen it do so.  I 
> would expect it to be most likely when moving from unhinted to hinted 
> across the minimum hinting size set in the font.

Speaking of minimum size, is there an easy way to keep Pango from trying to
render extremely small fonts, like in the <4 pixel range, but just put
blocks or dots or something at the appropriate places?  And would there be
any speed gain from it?  I suppose if you have the metrics for each glyph,
you can ignore all the hinting and rendering and just make a block filling
the metric-specified area or something.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?