[ft-devel] FreeType 2.3.8 released

[Werner LEMBERG]

FreeType 2.3.8 has been released.

It is available from

    http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/freetype/

or

    http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3157

The latter site also holds older versions of the FreeType library.

See below  for the  relevant snippet  from the  CHANGES file; users of
version 2.3.7 should upgrade.

Enjoy!


   Werner


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FreeType 2  is a software  font engine that  is designed to  be small,
efficient,  highly   customizable,  and  portable   while  capable  of
producing high-quality output (glyph images) of most vector and bitmap
font formats.

Note that  FreeType 2 is  a font service  and doesn't provide  APIs to
perform higher-level features, like text layout or graphics processing
(e.g.,  colored  text  rendering,  `hollowing',  etc.).   However,  it
greatly simplifies these tasks by providing a simple, easy to use, and
uniform interface to access the content of font files.

FreeType  2  is  released  under  two open-source  licenses:  our  own
BSD-like FreeType  License and the  GPL.  It can  thus be used  by any
kind of projects, be they proprietary or not.


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CHANGES BETWEEN 2.3.8 and 2.3.7

  I. IMPORTANT BUG FIXES

    - CID-keyed fonts in an SFNT wrapper were not handled correctly.

    - The smooth renderer produced truncated images (on the right) for
      outline parts with negative horizontal values.  Most fonts don't
      contain outlines left  to the y coordinate axis, but  the effect
      was very noticeable for outlines processed with FT_Glyph_Stroke,
      using thick strokes.

    - `FT_Get_TrueType_Engine_Type'  returned a  wrong  value if  both
      configuration  macros  TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER and
      TT_CONFIG_OPTION_UNPATENTED_HINTING were defined.

    - The  `face_index'  field  in   the  `FT_Face'  structure  wasn't
      initialized properly after calling FT_Open_Face and friends with
      a positive face index for CFFs,  WinFNTs, and, most importantly,
      for TrueType Collections (TTCs).


  II. IMPORTANT CHANGES

    - Rudimentary support for Type 1  fonts and CID-keyed Type 1 fonts
      in an SFNT wrapper has been  added -- such fonts are used on the
      Mac.  The core  SFNT tables `TYP1' and `CID '  are passed to the
      PS Type 1  and CID-keyed PS font drivers;  other tables (`ALMX',
      `BBOX', etc.) are not supported yet.

    - A  new interface  to extract  advance values  of glyphs  without
      loading their outlines has been added.  The functions are called
      `FT_Get_Advance' and `FT_Get_Advances'; they are defined in file
      `ftadvanc.h' (to be accessed as FT_ADVANCES_H).

    - A new function `FT_Get_FSType_Flags' (in FT_FREETYPE_H) has been
      contributed  by   David  Bevan  to  access   the  embedding  and
      subsetting restriction information of fonts.


  III. MISCELLANEOUS

    - FT_MulFix is now an inlined function; by default, assembler code
      is provided for x86 and ARM.  See FT_CONFIG_OPTION_INLINE_MULFIX
      and FT_CONFIG_OPTION_NO_ASSEMBLER (in ftoption.h) for more.

    - The handling of `tricky' fonts  (this is, fonts which don't work
      with the  autohinter, needing the font  format's hinting engine)
      has been generalized and changed slightly:

      . A new  face flag  FT_FACE_FLAG_TRICKY indicates that  the font
        format's  hinting engine is  necessary for  correct rendering.
        The macro FT_IS_TRICKY can be used to check this flag.

      . FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING is now ignored for tricky fonts.  To really
        force  raw  loading  of  such fonts  (without  hinting),  both
        FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING  and FT_LOAD_NO_AUTOHINT  must  be used  --
        this is something which you probably never want to do.

      . Tricky  TrueType fonts  always use  the  bytecode interpreter,
        either the patented or unpatented version.

    - The  function  `FT_GlyphSlot_Own_Bitmap'  has  been  moved  from
      FT_SYNTHESIS_H to FT_BITMAP_H; it  is now part of the `official'
      API.   (The functions  in  FT_SYNTHESIS_H are  still subject  to
      change, however.)

    - In the  `ftdiff'  demo  program you  can now  toggle the  use of
      FT_LOAD_IGNORE_GLOBAL_ADVANCE_WIDTH with key `a'.