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

["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.

> The issues that come to mind that would need to be addressed
> for plug-in support are:
> 
>  - Naming. Perhaps one could use names like
> 
>    "XLFD:-*-charter-*-r-*-*-*-180-*-*-*-*-*-*"
>    "Type1:TimesRoman-14"
> 
>    But this doesn't allow any sort of closest matching or subsitution

Could you elaborate? I do not quite follow what that is.

>  - Metrics: X suports a decent range of font metrics, that
>    probably could be approximated for any font renderer. But
>    other font systems include even more - and also some font
>    renderers may want non-integer-valued metrics.
> 
>  - Non-metric information. Quickdraw GX, as an extreme example
>    stores a lot of information about things like ligatures
>    and line breaking within the font.

This could be dropped, I guess.

>  - Extra drawing parameters. (Rotation, Multiple-master axes,
>    antialising, etc.)

I think these are the must. Especially antialiasing and rotation.

	Sergei