Re: [ft] FreeType as the Java Font Engine?

[mpsuzuki]

Hi

On Sun, 08 May 2005 22:42:49 +0200
Andreas Schildbach <address@hidden> wrote:

>I'd like to set FreeType2 as the Default Java Font Engine for JRE 1.4.2
>under Solaris, Linux and/or Windows. Is this possible?

I think it's almost impossible.

The functions in dynamically linked ELF binary (which is used in
SunOS 5.x, Linux, FreeBSD etc - not by AIX, MacOS and old HP-UX)
and can be replaced by LD_PRELOAD hook. So, if you can write a
glue code to encapsule FreeType with the face of JRE's original
font driver API (I heard Sun bought proprietary TrueType rastarizer
by 3rd party), you can replace it. However, if you cannot obtain
the API documentation officially, you will be forced to do reverse-
engineering of JRE, and it will violate JRE licensing.

I'm unfamiliar with Windows, but I heard that Windows' PE binary
executable has a catalogue of "which function should be loaded from
which DLL", therefore binary modification might be required to
change the function replacement.

>Can anyone tell how different the two font engines FreeType2 and the JRE
>internal will render? Will the width of a String be usually be the same?
>(differences in rendering is not that much of a problem as long as the
>width is "correct")

I'm afraid that JRE's text rendering uses more informations
than that obtained from font rasterizer.

Regards,
mpsuzuki