[ft-devel] Announcing FreeType 2.6.2

[Werner LEMBERG]

FreeType 2.6.2 has been released.

It is available from

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

or

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/freetype/files/

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

See below for the relevant snippet from the CHANGES file.

Enjoy!


   Werner


PS: Downloads from  savannah.nongnu.org  will redirect to your nearest
    mirror site.   Files on  mirrors may  be subject to  a replication
    delay   of   up   to   24   hours.   In   case   of  problems  use
    http://download-mirror.savannah.gnu.org/releases/


----------------------------------------------------------------------


http://www.freetype.org


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.


----------------------------------------------------------------------


CHANGES BETWEEN 2.6.1 and 2.6.2

  I. IMPORTANT CHANGES

    - The auto-hinter now supports stem darkening, to be controlled by
      the    new   `no-stem-darkening'    and   `darkening-parameters'
      properties.   This is  an  experimental  feature contributed  by
      Nikolaus Waxweiler, and  the interface might change  in a future
      release.

    - By default, stem darkening is now switched off (for both the CFF
      engine and the  auto-hinter).  The main reason is  that you need
      linear  alpha  blending  and  gamma correction  to  get  correct
      rendering results, and  the latter is not yet  available in most
      freely  available  rendering  stacks like  X11.   Applying  stem
      darkening without proper gamma correction  leads to far too dark
      rendering results.

    - The   meaning  of   `FT_RENDER_MODE_LIGHT'  has   been  slightly
      modified.   It  now  essentially  means `no  hinting  along  the
      horizontal  axis'; in  particular,  no change  of glyph  advance
      widths.  Consequently, the auto-hinter  is used for all scalable
      font  formats  except  for  CFF.    It  is  planned  that  other
      font-specific rendering engines (TrueType, Type 1) will follow.


  II. MISCELLANEOUS

    - The default  LCD filter  has been changed  to be  normalized and
      color-balanced.

    - For    better    compatibility   with    FontConfig,    function
      `FT_Library_SetLcdFilter'  accepts   a  new   enumeration  value
      `FT_LCD_FILTER_LEGACY1'   (which  has   the   same  meaning   as
      `FT_LCD_FILTER_LEGACY').

    - A large number of bugs have been detected by using the libFuzzer
      framework,  which should  further  improve  handling of  invalid
      fonts.  Thanks again to Kostya Serebryany and Bungeman!

    - `TT_CONFIG_OPTION_MAX_RUNNABLE_OPCODES',  a   new  configuration
      option, controls the maximum number of executed opcodes within a
      bytecode program.  You don't want to change this except for very
      special  situations (e.g.,  making a  library fuzzer  spend less
      time to handle broken fonts).

    - The smooth renderer has been made faster.

    - The `ftstring'  demo program  now supports  sub-pixel rendering;
      use key `l' to cycle through the LCD modes.

    - The `ftstring'  demo program now supports  colour rendering; use
      the `space' key to cycle through various colour combinations.

    - The graphical demo programs now use a default gamma value of 1.8
      (instead of 1.2).