Re: Why dose art not use fontconfig?

[Riccardo]

Hi,

On 2007-08-17 18:59:11 +0200 Jesse Ross <gnustep@jesseross.com> wrote:

> > I agree. While these arguments against using fontconfig are valid, 
> > the
> > mere annoyance of having to create a bundle for each font you want,
> > and not being able to keep all your fonts in one place, out weighs
> > them in my mind.
> >
> > In short, I think it would be a good idea if the art back end could
> > use fontconfig.

There is an additional reason: Those bundles are very openstepish. 
While I never really figured out the font system on X11 and find 
installation of fonts tedious, on mac you just drop them in to the 
Font folder. Moreover oyu have a system font folder, but also one for 
each user. Nfonts allow this logic and I like that. It is one of the 
few things I like more in art compared to xlib!

> This begs the question -- why make more adjustments to the art  
> backend when 
> Cairo has been blessed as the backend of choice for  future 
> development?
>
>  From Greg's blog ( 
> http://heronsperch.blogspot.com/2006/12/plans-for- 
> change.html ):

Because art and xlib still have advantages and having them is an added 
flexibility?

> > 5) Focus and concentrate on one and only one set of display  
> > technologies 
> > per platform. We expend way too much time and energy  on maintaining 
> > mulitple backends (xlib, art and etc) when we really  don't have to. 
> > For 
> > Linux/BSD we have two functional backends and  another on the away 
> > for 
> > cairo. What's the point of this? In my  opinion we should complete 
> > the 
> > cairo backend and deprecate BOTH the  xlib and art backends. xlib is 
> > hopelessly outdated and libart isn't  really supported by anyone 
> > anymore.

xlib works very well and has several advantages and it can be made 
pretty fast too as myStep demonstrates. Art has a difference philosphy 
and except for some bugs, it has a very high quality display, but 
clearly slower in some cases. Personally I don't share the idea of 
using cairo as a tool to support different platforms (like windows).

Art has for example that pretty nice font mechanism. What I'd like 
would be a tool that could creeate the nfonts packages in an automated 
and perhaps a visual way, including the name assignment.

Riccardo