Re: Thoughts on font management

[Isaiah Beerbower]

On 12/11/07, Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Isaiah,
>
> after six hours of sleep I think that my mail really sounds to negative.
> Sorry for that. Would it be possible for you to rewrite your code to be
> a compile time option? Lets say use a switch --enable-FontConfig with
> the default being YES, if that software is installed? That way your
> change wont interrupt my own development, whereas it is still easy to
> switch on and test.

Sure. I'll do that as soon as possible.

> On the other hand you should also have a look at the FontConfig
> configuration file and see, what options you are missing there and try
> to lobby the developers to integrate them. To me these solutions look
> very similar.

I'll take a look.

> And for the art backend your code would be a big improvement. You should
> think about adding it there. Again perhaps as an option.

It would be fairly simple to add it to the art backend.

- Isaiah Beerbower

>
> Fred Kiefer wrote:
> > Isaiah Beerbower wrote:
> >> On 12/10/07, Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de> wrote:
> >>> Isaiah Beerbower wrote:
> >>>> On 12/10/07, Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de> wrote:
> >>>>> Isaiah Beerbower wrote:
> >>>>>> I have an almost complete implementation working with the cairo back
> >>>>>> end. Should I create a new branch for it under /libs/back/branches?
> >>>>>> This is my first contribution to GNUstep, which is why I ask.
> >>>>> The first thing you need to do is of course to assign the copyright to
> >>>>> the FSF :-)
> >>>>> After that you should be able to get write access to the SVN repository.
> >>>> I've already done both.
> >>>>
> >>>>> Whether we need a separate branch for this change depends on the amount
> >>>>> of code that changes and on how stable the change is in the beginning. I
> >>>>> prefer to work on the trunk, so that people will actually test the
> >>>>> changes I make. But this is only advisable if you are willing to correct
> >>>>> any problems very fast.
> >>>> Currently I have made changes in only three classes
> >>>> (CairoFontEnumerator, CairoFaceInfo, & CairoFontInfo) and I've tested
> >>>> it in several situations already and consider it stable.
> >>>>
> >>>> The reason I asked is because you said "I would prefer to see code,
> >>>> before I judge on it". Shall I put it in trunk then?
> >>>>
> >>> Fine for me.
> >> Ok, its in trunk now.
> >
> > Now I have to admit that I completely misunderstood what you were about
> > to do. I expected that you upgrade the art backend to be able to work
> > together with FontConfig. But what you did was downgrade the cairo
> > backend to work without FontConfig. I should have noticed from your last
> > mail, but I really way to busy to look into the detail. My fault.
> >
> > Does this mean that I will have to set the full path to my fonts to get
> > all the fonts back that I am currently able to use with cairo? And even
> > then all the bitmap fonts will be missing? If this is that case, I would
> > like to ask you to add a compile time switch to go back to the old
> > behaviour. For the xlib backend we are currently supporting three
> > different implementations of the font management, just to keep everybody
> > happy.
> >
> > GNUstep is about choice, not about forcing people to use things in the
> > one and only way. I don't mind if there are other ways to get the a list
> > of usable fonts beside the FontConfig way. If you want nfont support in
> > parallel, fine. If you want to force me to use nfont only, no way.
> >
> > GNUstep is also about standards. We try to use the standards that are
> > already available. FontConfig is one of them. It is used in a variety of
> > environments, by divers applications. Why isn't it good enough for
> > GNUstep? What you implemented looks to me like a stripped down version
> > of FontConfig. If we need to work with font cache files, then why not on
> > the FontConfig ones? I don't want to keep yet another cache and
> > configuration up to date when I move on to a different release of my
> > base system.
> >
> > Sorry for sounding that negative. I know it was me how said you should
> > go ahead, but this is just not what I expected and it looks like it is
> > making live harder for me and other users of GNUstep.
> >
>


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