Re: [Devel] Bitmap font file reading progress

[Mark Leisher]

    Francesco> 1- Use the xc/lib/font/bitmap code of XFree86.

    Francesco> 2- Use the excellent Mark Leisher BDF library.

    Francesco> Advantages: It fully complies Adobe 2.2 specification (am I
    Francesco> right?), deals with many different PROPERTIES, performs error
    Francesco> correction on malformed BDF file, and so on.

    Francesco> (Minor) Flaws: Quite huge library.  Missing PCF support.

I believe there are some parts of 2.2 that I don't support properly, and true,
I don't support PCF yet.  Both of these should be fixed in time for the
xmbdfed 5.0 release.

Yes, my BDF library is huge!  It does a lot of things that are probably not
useful for FreeType.  But it does support converting a lot of other bitmap
font formats into BDF, and I thought that part might be useful for FreeType.

    Francesco> 3- I can write /ex-novo/ the two drivers.

    Francesco> I am looking for your opinions: both X and FreeType developers
    Francesco> welcomed.

At this point, my opinion is that the best option would be #3 - write your own
using the FreeType framework, but use pieces from #1 and #2 as you need them.
And from experience, the code should not depend on X11 header files that may
not be provided in a default *nux installation (i.e. the PCF header files).
It has been 10 years, but I still get email from people who have copies of my
"snftobdf" program without the X11 headers included, wanting to know where
they can find those header files.

BTW, if you are interested in antiques:

  ftp://crl.nmsu.edu/pub/misc/snftobdf-1.6.tar.Z
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Mark Leisher
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