Re: [gtk-list] Re: Hershey fonts are now supported!!

[Aaron Digulla <digulla wi-pc44 fh-konstanz de>]

Quoting Sergei O. Naoumov (serge@physics.unc.edu):

> > No offense, but last time I looked at the Hershey fonts, they were
> > not exactly especially attractive. (My opinion - I've heard the
> > opposite from other people)
> >
> > I tend to think that they are, in any case, too specialized
> > to go into core GTK+. However, people have, in the past
> > floated around ideas for putting plug-in font renderer support
> > into GTK+, and I think that might be the way to go.
>
> Hmm. I did not know there was an idea to have a generic font renderer
> in Gtk. In that case, obviously, there is no reason to include Hershey
> into the core library. I'll make it add on.
>
> Speaking of the general renderer... What is not really clear whether this
> general renderer will completely bypass X server. If one is running TTF
> font server, would it bypass it also? It seems like duplication of work.
> On the other hand, X server can not, as far as I know, rotate the glyphs.
> And even if it could, it does not support antialiasing which makes the
> rotated glyphs to look ugly.

Most modern X servers can rotate and shear the glyphs. But I see no
big problem here: You can use a plugin which uses X's text functions
and another one which emulates them (to get antialising, for example).

And the work wouldn't really be duplicated. If X ever can antialiase
fonts, the code could be reused (if it was written carefully).

Sitenote: I use TrueType fonts with xfstt and it's a bit of a pain. The
fonts are ok but the setup is ugly (I have to add this font server to the
fontpath every time I login). Also, there are many hidden problems (eg.
when I ask for very big letters; this can exceed the max. request size of
the X server and the font server can sometimes do nothing about it).

--
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