On Tuesday 20 August 2002 9:32 pm, Keith Packard wrote: | Around 19 o'clock on Aug 20, Pablo Saratxaga wrote: | > Yes, I agree. My concern was for programs not using fontconfig (like in | > other OS), or using freetype at a very low level and expecting there | > are always outlines; as if the bitmap only fonts cause problems with | > those, then bad press could follow. | | Fontconfig doesn't isolate the program from the vageries of font formats, | the issue is that FreeType exposes a uniform API for all underlying | formats, among them PCF and FNT which are both bitmap formats. The | application cannot see what the format is, and must probe the returned | FT_Face object for it's capabilities. | | I would also like to see FreeType provide the ability to scale bitmaps; | with anti-aliasing, the results can be usable and are often more legible | than poorly hinted outlines. Brian Stell did this in Mozilla when running | directly on top of FreeType to satisfy requests from Han language users.
I think that we should focus on *well hinted outlines*, and on hinting/AA-rendering process itslef. TrueType fonts consisting of embedded bitmaps only should be used only to save space on user's hard disk. I find it very annoying to install 2 font packages (75dpi, 100dpi), each of about 10MB, just to *satisfy XFRee86 dependency requirement*. [vad@VPlessky vad]$ rpm -qa | grep XFree86 XFree86-libs-4.2.0-6mdk XFree86-devel-4.2.0-6mdk XFree86-xfs-4.2.0-6mdk XFree86-4.2.0-6mdk XFree86-75dpi-fonts-4.2.0-6mdk XFree86-100dpi-fonts-4.2.0-6mdk XFree86-server-4.2.0-6mdk [vad@VPlessky vad]$ rpm -q --whatrequires XFree86-75dpi-fonts netscape-common-4.79-2mdk drakxtools-1.1.7-76mdk [vad@VPlessky vad]$ rpm -q --whatrequires XFree86-100dpi-fonts drakxtools-1.1.7-76mdk drakconf-0.96-1mdk ok, I agree that distros should better package XFree86, and dependencies above should be unnecessary, but now we have situation when RedHat and MDK both ship huge font packages (don't know about other distros) I would love to have XFree86-75dpi-fonts and XFree86-100dpi-fonts in compact format, say, 1MB in size each :-) // that in doesn't hurt to install those font packages. | | Keith Packard XFree86 Core Team HP Cambridge Research Lab | _______________________________________________ | Fonts mailing list | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/fonts -- Vadim Plessky http://kde2.newmail.ru (English) 33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html KDE mini-Themes http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/ _______________________________________________ Fonts mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/fonts
