Re: Xft library warning?

[Mike Miller]

On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 19:38:24 -0800, Ben Abbott wrote:
> > On Jan 10, 2018, at 19:32, Dmitri A. Sergatskov <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I think freetype is a higher level library that uses Xft on X11 systems.

It's the other way around, Xft is an interface for X11 to use FreeType.

> Anyone know why Xft is needed by Octave? Is it used for the GUI, or is it 
> used for figure text objects?

I think it is needed on GNU/Linux systems for FLTK. The Xft library is
never used by Octave directly, the configure script only checks for it
because a build error may occur on some systems that have FLTK installed
but are missing Xft. It's more like Octave is making sure that the
dependency is installed.

See https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/octave-maintainers/2013-11/msg00629.html

This may no longer be strictly necessary on current systems, but it
might take some effort to be sure that it can be dropped safely.

-- 
mike

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