[Devel] Reducing load time of ft_load_glyph

[Rich Stephens]

We are using freetype ONLY for the purpose of loading metrics information for TTF/OTF files.

We call ft_new_face() once for each TTF we are loading, and then we run through the unicode character map and get
the metrics information for each glyph that exists using a loop of FT_Get_First_Char and FT_Load_Glyph.

We are not actually drawing the characters or using any bitmap information or other glyph drawing information other than

the actual metrics themselves (metrics.horiAdvance, metrics.width, metrics.horiBearingX for each glyph, along with
a few other values that are not on a per-glyph basis.

All this information is loaded into a TTF structure, and no other freetype code is ever called again for a particular TTF font.

This means (I think) that the caching method that was implemented recently really doesn't help us.

When checking our application's run with TrueTime (on Windows, although are application is also ported to 3 Unix platforms as well),

we have found that when we are using a TTF, FT_Load_Glyph makes up a huge percentage of our running time.

Is there any way, knowing the minimal information we are retrieving from the TTF, to reduce the time it takes for FT_Load_Glyph?  Any options we can set to cut out the loading of information we aren't using (like bitmaps, as an example)?

Rich Stephens
Software Developer

Optio Software, Inc.
Windward Fairways II
3015 Windward Plaza
Alpharetta, GA 30005
(770) 576-3561
address@hidden