RE: so, is this claim about pango still true? or does nobody actually care?

["Robert Thorpe" <Robert Thorpe antenova com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gtk-list-bounces gnome org 
> [mailto:gtk-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Petr Tomasek
> Sent: 25 October 2005 11:56
> To: gtk-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: so,is this claim about pango still true? or does 
> nobody actually care?
> 
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 08:47:38AM +0300, Tommi Komulainen wrote:
> > On 10/14/05, Paul Davis <paul linuxaudiosystems com> wrote:
> > >
> > > is this still true? does anybody care? is there a way to 
> avoid pango 
> > > entirely and still get AA fonts inside GTK2? will this 
> ever be fixed 
> > > before everyone is using h/w acceleration to print button labels?
> > 
> > If you don't actually need any of the fancy features Pango 
> provides, 
> > bi-directional text, paragraphs and whatnot, you might just as well
> 
> Rendering international text is not fancy, it's basic feature!
> 
> > use Xft2 directly. It requires a bit more code, but with 
> the Nokia 770 
> > VKB implementation we measured roughly 50% reduction in the time it 
> > takes to redraw the whole layout (buttons with single-character
> > labels)
> 
> It's sad, You're creating crapy applications, that cannot be 
> used with arabic or hebrew, etc. :-(

It depends on your purpose.
If you're writing a small application with a fairly limited audience
then rendering international text is irrelevant.
For example I'm writing a small program at present only I and maybe a
hundred others at the most will use.  I will probably never even find
someone who wants it to work in another language than english, let alone
anyone to give me translations.

If your writing a big app like a word processor then it's a useful thing
to have.