[GtkGLExt] gdk_gl_font_use_pango_font: life support or euthanasia?

[Braden McDaniel <braden endoframe com>]

gdk_gl_font_use_pango_font(_for_display) uses deprecated Pango
interfaces.  Rewriting it not to do so is not straightforward: it uses
these Pango functions to get something to hand off to glXUseXFont.  As I
understand it, there's no direct replacement for these Pango functions:
they rely on older X11 font machinery that modern text rendering code
has moved away from; and glXUseXFont was intended to work with that same
machinery.

Given that fixing gdk_gl_font_use_pango_font is nontrivial, I'm not so
sure it *should* be fixed.  I say that because I really don't think that
this function belongs in GtkGLExt.  It is a convenience function that
doesn't rely on any (other) GtkGLExt internals.  And it isn't likely to
be convenient for anything nontrivial.  There's other stuff in the API
like this, too: gdkglshapes.h is a good example.

Now, ideally we'd have deprecated this stuff months/years ago.  But we
didn't.  So here are our options, as I see it:

     1. Reimplement gdk_gl_font_use_pango_font to use modern
        interfaces. 
     2. Deprecate it and rush out a release. 
     3. Simply kill it.

Now, I'm not doing #1.  So unless someone else volunteers to do it, it's
not really an option.

I'm unsure of the value of #2.  It could easily end up being a very
short deprecation period; and we might end up having to rush out a
release eliminating the functions (when the Pango bits in question
disappear out from under us).

And that brings us to option #3.  This lets us take a little more time
with the next release--and we can talk about what other sorts of API
changes we'd like to make while we're in the spirit of breaking stuff.


-- 
Braden McDaniel <braden endoframe com>