Re: Why dose art not use fontconfig?

[Fred Kiefer]

Isaiah Beerbower wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> Just a quick question about the art back end: For what reason dose it
> not use fontconfig?
> 
> Thanks,
> Isaiah Beerbower
> 

The real reason for that choice could only be given by Alexander
Malmberg, who implemented the art backend.
I may be able to offer you a few hints, but none of it may be the true
reason.
Using the nfont concept offers some benefits over fontconfig. It allows
us to assign a Postscript name to a font, which is then used for
printing. All the other GNUstep backends need to guess a name here. The
nfont file FontInfo.plist allows you also to change the name of the font
of the type face to something more readable and to specify information
missing or wrong in the actual font data. In addition this concept
allows you to limit the available fonts for GNustep.

Overall I think this is not worth it, this is why I use fontconfig for
the xlib and the cairo backend, still I can understand when people take
a different point of view. If there is a demand for it, I could add
fontconfig for art as well as a compile time option.

Fred