Help wanted (preparing the candidate release)

[David Turner]

Hello,

  There are now good chances that we'll be able to release the
  _last_ FreeType 2 beta next week, a.k.a. the 2.0 release candidate.

  There are however a few things that need to be done before this
  can occur, and I would like to know if some of you could help.
  It's not very complex stuff, but I'd rather spend my time
  polishing the docs (including the tutorial):

   - the demonstration programs must be separated from the
     main FreeType 2 source hierarchy.

     Building them is a bit more complex than the core font
     engine, because they may rely on external libraries (like X11, gettext
     or wathever..) and they deserve their own build system.

     (I suggest a more classical approach, i.e. Autoconf/Automake
      for Unix, and a simple set of Makefiles for other
      platforms/compilers..)


   - the Unix-specific parts of the build system need to be
     completed to have a correct "make install" and "make uninstall"
     available.. This basically means updating a few files in
     "freetype2/config/unix" (and it should be _really_ easy as
     the only external dependency we have is on "mmap" !!)

     Note that I also want to rename "freetype2/config" to
     "freetype2/build", as i believe it corresponds more to the
     contents of this directory..


   - it would also be nice to compile the font library directly
     as a DLL on Windows, OS/2 and others.. This should only
     require minimal changes to the build system..


   - if someone has the chance, providing a "ftsystem.c" replacement
     for Win32 that uses memory-mapped files (just like the Unix
     version does) instead of the slow ANSI libC.

     Unfortunately, these are not available on OS/2 so don't bother
     to try :-(


   - and of course, more configuration sub-makefiles for various compilers
     and platforms..

Voila, I'd really appreciate any help in these areas as they'll define
the "polish" of the release candidate..

Cheers,

- David

PS: And for the news, I just integrated Tom's patches to the CFF driver,
    and added a Windows FNT/FON driver in "freetype2/src/winfonts". The
    PCF and BDF drivers are now nearly complete and should come soon
    (I'm just too lazy to do it right now :-()