On Tue, 27 Aug 2002 21:41:14 -0700 Keith Packard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> There are a lot of knobs to turn in selecting how to render fonts. What > I'd like to see is some consistent set of orthogonal knobs all layed out > together. Continuing down our current path of a random set of variables > seems like a bad plan. > If I may make a suggestion with regards to this issue. There should be two switches to control rendering at the highest level. 1. Anti-aliased rendering switch 2. Embedded-bitmap override switch for the purpose of illustration, i'll call them AAR and EBO respectively The AAR switch simply does what its name suggests. Turns global anti-aliased rendering on and off. When AAR is on, fonts should be rendered with AA enabled. With AAR off, fonts should be rendered without anti-aliasing. The EBO switch only makes a difference when AAR is on. When AAR is off, embedded bitmaps should be used where available. When AAR is on, however, embedded bitmaps be used only when the EBO switch is on. The theory behind doing things this way is based the following assumption: Embedded bitmaps are provided where hinting isn't (for whatever reason), or where anti-aliasing isn't practical (read high density kanji/chinese characters). Since western fonts are often properly hinted, there is no reason for embedded bitmaps to be included, and thus the EBO switch has no affect on them at all. I think there is still a question of whether the feature of being able to turn anti aliasing on and off by size is still useful, considering the fact that embedded bitmaps are now supported. Since its already there, I guess there's no point taking it out, but it seems like a pretty minor feature that most gui systems don't support. Poorly hinted fonts without embedded bitmaps are going to look bad either way. Ken _______________________________________________ Fonts mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/fonts
