> > Well, it's in the standard API. I did a lot of research into extending
> > AmigaOS just before I killed my "wishlist", and that was one of the
> > more intriguing things; the AmigaOS has a bloody comprehensive font
> > API that has been dormant since OS 2.0.. what a waste..
>
> I have seen lots of messages from people saying the Amiga has
> lousy font support.
Frankly, they're idiots - it's all there if you look for it ;)
> I always thought this was strange, as it covers everything very
> nicely, except anti-aliasing where RISCos is the leader.
And I've said before on this list, anti-aliasing support would actually
have to be one hell of a hack, only really possible if they integrated
an RTG API into graphics.library. May as well just leave it and use Tao,
eh? :)
> It would still be nice to have a file which listed the whole family,
> especially for a font like Helvetica which has about thirty versions.
> The standard maps just do 4 versions.
Well you have Plain, Bold, Italic, and Bold-Italic. They're all supported
by simply pointing at an engine to generate those glyphs: which can
be a proper outline font, or something that smears or shears. Unless
the font API actually supports other types of font (such as Condensed,
Narrow and the rest) it would be difficult to add without extra work
on the OS side AND the application side.
In reality it would be easier if they were split up into groups: so you have
Arial (plain, bold, italic, bolditalic), Arial Narrow (plain, bold, italic,
bolditalic),
Arial Condensed (p, b, i, bi) and so on. You get a decent benefit out of
that
at least: a font list which is virtually quartered in size for each font,
and
extra-smart glyphs for each.
> An XML file would be best.
Since when did AmigaOS support XML, though? I assume you mean on V's
side, but then I don't really think V should be supporting things by
kludging
around stuff that should be in the OS - or a replacement module for the
OS.
Better to kick Ragriffi up the bum until he implements family support, than
to get Olli to add ANOTHER check and procedure to his HTML layout
engine, and ANOTHER layer of complexity for the average user (who
already seems baffled by this new font concept ;)
--
Matt Sealey [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Distributed Systems Support
Computer Centre
University of Leicester
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