Darren Dale wrote: > On Sunday 04 November 2007 8:50:48 am Michael Droettboom wrote: >> This is maybe another push in the direction of using fontconfig (which >> claims to support otf fonts already). I'd really prefer to go in that >> direction rather than continue to tack on partial reimplementations of it >> in font_manager.py -- but it does complicate dependencies on non-X11 >> platforms). > > What are the dependency problems? I thought freetype was the only > requirement. > Incidentally, GIMP uses fontconfig on windows, and they comment at > http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html: "Contrary to what many > seem to think, fontconfig is in no way dependent on X11, so it does make some > sense to use it on Windows."
Fontconfig depends on freetype and either expat or libxml2 (expat being the easier/lighter dependency). But the real dependency problem is that on Windows it generally isn't already there. So it would have to be added to the external windows dependency zip, and we would probably have to go through a few contortions to call it as a commandline tool. If we go the route of wrapping the API (which would be better anyway, since then we could look for fonts in our own custom font directory), it would just be like the existing dependencies on freetype and libpng. Not a big deal, really, but it adds an additional maintenance burden on those Windows dependencies. On the Mac, fontconfig appears to be installed as part of Apple's X11 distribution, but not without it, even though it is useful outside of X11. So, in case you can't tell, I've long been torn by this -- fontconfig solves the font lookup problem in a much more robust way than matplotlib will probably ever have the resources to do. On the other hand, it adds complexity to the matplotlib build req's. Perhaps if there were buy-in from some regular Windows and Mac devels to help maintain this going forward I wouldn't be so hesitant. Cheers, Mike -- Michael Droettboom Science Software Branch Operations and Engineering Division Space Telescope Science Institute Operated by AURA for NASA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
