RE: [Devel] Freetype on EPOC Devices

[Chan Choong Cheng-F11968]

Hi,

Thanks for your prompt response. 
I'm pretty new to the EPOC scene, so there are many stuffs which I've yet to 
grasp.


Hence, I have more clarifications to make.

(1) Currently, I have nothing to work on. (Meaning I have to create a 
rasterizer from scratch). 
Do you recommend that I write a rasterizer by deriving from 
COpenFontRasterizer, or work on your EPOC Open Font System(freetype.dll) to 
create a polymorphic dll? 

My technical lead is pretty sure that your work on EPOC Open Font System will 
be helpful my implementation of a font rasterizer for "compressed bitmap fonts".


(2) How does your freetype.dll work? 
When I remove all .gdr files from \system\fonts ,and leave the .ttf files 
there, I couldn't display fonts on my emulator. 
Does that mean freetype.dll is not loaded by the emulator at all?

(3) Can you guide me on how my rasterizer will fit into the system. 
Eg. when will it get loaded up, or when will the system call for this dll?


Once again, thanks for your help. 
Hope I'm not taking up too much of your time.

Best regards,
Dixon Chan



-----Original Message-----
From: Graham Asher [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 5:03 PM
To: CHOONG CHENG CHAN
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: RE: [Devel] Freetype on EPOC Devices


Dixon,

you asked:

<<<<<<
Currently, I'm doing a font rasterizer for my EPOC device.
We have our own font format which is basically compressed bitmap fonts.
My font rasterizer is supposed to extract the required fonts, decompress and
render them on my EPOC screen.
Will Freetype2 be useful in my project?
If so, I would be grateful if you can show any examples or similar work done
with freetype.
>>>>>>

I wrote the Open Font System for EPOC, which includes the rasterizer
framework, so I am probably the best person to advise you...

There is no need to use FreeType unless your rasterizer already uses the
FreeType library. What you need to do is write a rasterizer by deriving a
class from the abstract base class COpenFontRasterizer and putting it into a
DLL with a single exported function that creates objects of that class.

Versions of the Symbian SDK from version 6.0 onwards have reasonably good
documentation on the Open Font System and rasterizer framework (I wrote it,
rather quickly I am afraid, and passed it to the Symbian SDK people, who put
it into their house style). The documentation includes sample code from an
earlier version of Symbian's TrueType rasterizer, which uses FreeType.

If you have any difficulties please let me know.

Best regards,

Graham Asher
formerly a contractor for Symbian; now a freelance software architect