From: Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Apr 26 2002 - 11:47:44 EDT
--- Leonard Rosenthol <leonardr@lazerware.com> wrote:
> At 3:45 AM +0100 4/26/02, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> >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?
>
> No, you are NOT correct.
> >FreeType is an exact reproduction of the TrueType
> APIs right?
>
> TrueType is a font format - it's NOT an SDK/API.
> FreeType
> is a library/SDK/API that provides a single API for
> access to
> numerous font formats (TrueType, Type1, OpenType,
> etc.).
Yes I spent a few dollars at the cybercafe researching
this after my email.
> >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.
>
> It is true that the TTF renderers in both Windows
> and MacOS
> have the license for the specifically patented
> hinting aspect of
> those fonts, and so for SOME glyphs in SOME fonts,
> they will render
> better with the native code than with FreeType.
>
> But having a single XP API for all platforms will
> be a worth
> (IMHO) the small cost of quality for those few
> glyphs & fonts -
> especially if we have the auto-hinter in FreeType
> enabled.
How about this: We aim at a portable renderer by
basically wrapping each FreeType API we use in an
AbiWord API so that in the future somebody might be
able to add Windows or Mac specific versions? We
usually make lightweight abstractions like this anyway
I think and it'll get optimized away to nothing.
Andrew Dunbar.
=====
http://linguaphile.sourceforge.net http://www.abisource.com
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