Re: further notes on using Pango

From: Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Apr 26 2002 - 12:28:02 EDT

  • Next message: Andrew Dunbar: "Re: further notes on using Pango"

     --- Leonard Rosenthol <leonardr@lazerware.com> wrote:
    > At 4:57 PM +0100 4/26/02, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
    > >I looked into it and TrueType specifies a file
    > format
    > >and a bunch of structures but the APIs are up to
    > the
    > >OS so Windows, Mac, and FreeType will have
    > different
    > >but analagous APIs.
    >
    > Correct.
    >
    >
    > >I'm not familiar with any of them
    > >but I'm in favour of an open design even if we only
    > >aim for FreeType for now.
    >
    > In order to do that, we'd need to rewrite most of
    > Pango to
    > use our new abstracted API's instead of the direct
    > calls to FreeType.

    Aha! Now I understand!

    Then what we need is a wrapper for the Pango APIs
    which map to pangowin32 on Windows and pangoft on
    X (and everything else for now).

    > The fact of the matter is that Pango already
    > abstracts the platform
    > API calls - but the only one of those that is close
    > to complete is X11.
    >
    > It's a LOT less work for us to get the FreeType
    > backend to
    > Pango working on all our platforms than to work on
    > each individual
    > backend.

    But if each individual backend implements the same API
    why is it more work?

    > >I personally want to get
    > >familiar with the Windows APIs for the same things
    > and
    > >intend to investigate them when I next have a
    > machine.
    >
    > I don't know how many calls Pango makes to the OS,
    > but I
    > suspect it's probably not too many...There may also
    > be issues with
    > Windows not exposing all the necessary
    > information...

    Windows seems to err in favour of overexposure in my
    experience but I guess I don't like the idea of
    blocking off a path before it's investigated when it
    won't really cost us anything to make the wrapper.

    Andrew Dunbar.

    > Leonard
    > --
    >
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    > Leonard Rosenthol
    > <mailto:leonardr@lazerware.com>
    >
    <http://www.lazerware.com>

    =====
    http://linguaphile.sourceforge.net http://www.abisource.com

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