Subject: Fonts and XFree 4.0
From: Justin Bradford (justin@ukans.edu)
Date: Sun Nov 28 1999 - 19:22:48 CST
This is just an "FYI-post", but it sounds like AbiWord's problems with X's
limited font abilities will be addressed in XFree 4.0.
Keith Packard <keithp@suse.com> posted the following on the xfree-devel
list:
> Recall also that one persistant request is that font outline and metric
> information be shared between the X server and the application. There
> are two obvious ways of solving this; either have the X server and
> application share the font files, or extend the existing X Font
> Services Protocol to include additional font data and have the
> application to connect to the font server along with the X server. The
> latter will clearly be required, sharing files would probably be a
> reasonable optimization for the local case.
I followed that up by asking if the above extensions will provide the
functionality needed for AbiWord, and here is his reply:
> We're only talking about the display at this point, but yes, the idea is
> to provide enough information to accurately position glyphs on the
> screen, information equivalent to that found in the .afm file. For
> printing, the problem is different as the hard part is knowing what
> fonts the printer provides; if you can map printer fonts back to the
> improved X fonts, then the information provided would be sufficent
> for printing as well.
Anyway, it sounds to me that 4.0 will allow us to use whatever fonts are
on the system (instead of just the ones distributed with AbiWord). Of
course, it will include a TrueType font server, as well.
Justin
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