Hi, To support suitcase fonts in the resource fork (such as /Library/Fonts/Arial), I need to include ftmac.c in compiling freetype. The ftmac.c currently uses Carbon to support suitcase fonts.
However in Leopard, all code that uses fork (I mean the UNIX fork system call, not the resource fork - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork-exec) but not exec must not call any Carbon API, otherwise the application will crash with the error "The process has forked and you cannot use this CoreFoundation functionality safely." This is documented in Leopard release notes for CoreFoundation. See http://developer.apple.com/releasenotes/CoreFoundation/CoreFoundation.html under the section "CoreFoundation and fork()". One common usage of freetype is in Apache/PHP scripts (often through GD), and Apache does use fork without exec. This causes Apache/PHP to crash when using freetype, with the above error message in the Apache error log. If I compile freetype without ftmac.c support, it works normally, but I cannot use most suitcase fonts. As I searched for work around, I found a message in this mailing list that mentions a Carbon-free method to support suitcase fonts. I figure this may solve the problem completely if it is also CoreFoundation free and can support resource fork suitcase fonts. Although some other functions, such as getting a font file from a QuickDraw/ATS font name, will no longer work without Carbon, I think it is OK, as similar functions are not available on any other OS as well. In case someone has already written the Carbon-free suitcase font support, I would appreciate if you may share your code. I am willing to test and debug it. I hope the freetype developers who are reading this message can consider to implement this feature quickly, as many people will certain be affected by this incompatible Leopard change. (I know this problem is created by Leopard, not freetype, but we will have to live with it.) Regards Dipsy Po _________________________________________________________________ Connect to the next generation of MSN Messenger http://imagine-msn.com/messenger/launch80/default.aspx?locale=en-us&source=wlmailtagline _______________________________________________ Freetype mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype
