>> You're describing two main benefits of dynamic linking and why it so popular. >> As far as I'm concerned, static linking is rather used for edge cases like >> static code analysis or when you can't be certain that a required library >> exists on a system when want to run your program. > > Yea, I see. The thing is, I had this really wrong image in the back of my mind > that since FreeType is being used on so many different devices, it is supposed > to be self-contained. In that sense, I expected `libpng' to be a part of it. I > was dead wrong. Thanks to you guys, it's clear now! :)
Let me just throw this in here for reference; _generally_ FreeType tries to avoid dependencies like these where it can; you aren't wrong there ;) As you can see, FreeType doesn't really have many dependencies, compared to a lot of other important Linux libraries. You can find numerous discussions about using/not-using external libraries in FreeType's mailing lists -- a recent one was about the usage of whether to use an external logging library; that was leading up to GSoC. So people here are wary (for good reason) when it comes to dependencies like these -- they will always be discussed extensively. BUT, adding source code like the entirety of `svgnative' is just no option (as discussed earlier). The question there is rather whether FreeType _should_ provide functionality that requires external libraries. One thing to consider is that FreeType is `as low as it gets on the font rendering stack' (as Werner likes to explain) and there are a great amount of libraries out there that are still considered `low-level' that build atop of FreeType to provide glyph colouring, shaping, etc. In the case of SVG support, however, discussions have led to the conclusion that FreeType would benefit from it without betraying its core principles (of providing low-low-low-level utilities for font rendering). Also, SVG support is optional, so you can build + run FreeType without requiring it. This is in analogy to PNG/emoticon support, btw. If you follow FreeType long enough, you will definitely stumble into situations where external libraries are the centre of heated discussions :) Best Armin _______________________________________________ Freetype-devel mailing list Freetype-devel@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype-devel
