From: Tomas Frydrych (tomas@frydrych.uklinux.net)
Date: Fri Apr 26 2002 - 03:43:28 EDT
> Am I right in believing we don't actually need to
> build FreeType on platforms that already use the real
> TrueType such as Windows and Mac? FreeType is an
> exact reproduction of the TrueType APIs right? I also
> think TrueType is probably faster than FreeType and
> of course it has the patent on hinting which is
> usually turned off in FreeType for legal reasons.
No. We would use FreeType on all our platforms. Two basic
reasons. (1) To use any native text handling routines, we would
have to port Pango to platform XY, that is well beyond our
resources (it means writing the interface between Pango itself and
platform XY, plus writing the interfaces between each existing
language module and platform XY). (2) By using Pango with
FreeType we will get a consistent (and very decent) capabilities
across all the platforms controlled from XP code. One of the worst
nightmares with bidi build is getting consistent behaviour on various
flavours of windows, and I cannot wait to get rid off the native
windows textdrawing calls.
I am not worried about FT2 performance too much, and as for the
patented algorithms, many people could still use them, since not
all of us live in countries where Apple holds the patents :).
> We'll be using Xft on *nix right? FreeType is just a
> glyph renderer, not a Font Manager.
No we will not, but Pango with FT2 has an internal font manager
that is cut-and-pasted from xft.
> Another thing I've been wondering about is that since
> there is pangowin32, pangoft, and pangox, what would
> be used on Mac and shouldn't there be pangomac that
> used ATSUI or Mac's TrueType?
As I explained above, the only realistic option is using FT on all
platforms.
Tomas
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