Re: some more issues with the new API

[Just van Rossum]

At 10:42 AM +0100 16-03-2000, David Turner wrote:
>Not exactly, there are a lot of things in a glyph object that a client
>application
>will never see (and will never need to see :-). A bitmap or an outline is
>simply
>one view of the content of a glyph slot..
>
>The glyph slot can be seen as bitmap/outline factory if you really want to
>speak in OO terms, however there is no reason to decouple it from its parent
>FT_Face..

I think it doesn't need be be completely decoupled. The point is: a glyph
may have a reference to a face object (and probably should, for all the
reasons you brought up), but the face should *not* store a reference to the
glyph!

Right now there's this relationship:

   face->glyph->face

The proposed change would get rid of the first, leaving only

   glyph->face

...and the face will then be merely be a factory for glyphs.

(likewise for FT_Size)

>> Ok. Now I'v read a bit the embedded docs and I'm somewhat confused about
>>what
>> glyphs are. It seems a Glyph is loaded already together with some 'drawable'
>> type (bitmap or outline) to be used in the rendering process.
>> Is there any advantage in combining these steps into one ?
>>
>Actually, it's not a glyph, but a "glyph slot",

This distinction strikes me as artificial, but it definitely confuses me! I
mean, you called the FT_GlyphSlot field in the FT_Face struct "glyph", not
"glyphSlot"...

Is this what it is?:

- a "glyph" is one glyph from a font, say an 'a'.
- a "glyph slot" is an *instance* of such a glyph, eg. an 'a' at 12 points.

Does that sound about right?

Just