Re: [Devel] Java port of FreeType

[John Leuner]

> > I am interested in doing a port of freetype 2 to Java.
> >
> Do you want to provide Java bindings for the FreeType 2 API or
> instead "rewrite" the engine in Java ??

I never had any plans for bindings, but:

a) is there a need for this?
b) how hard would it be?

Writing them would be a good way to learn a bit more about freetype.
 
> In the latter case, I believe that you'd probably better rewrite
> the engine completely, for at least two reasons:
> 
>   - its internal design tends to change more or less often, when
>     we add features, modules or simply cleanup some internal thingies.
>     it's also an order of magnitude more complex than FreeType 1,
>     believe me.. !!
> 
>   - the engine has been written in C, and I'm pretty confident that
>     copying it straight into a Java program is going to create a few
>     problems..

I don't want to start a project that will require so much effort. 

Is it possible that I could somehow implement one part of FT in java? 

Is there a module that has a very 'clean' interface to the rest of the 
code (something that could be implemented with a few JNI methods)? 
(Performance doesn't matter)

I would like to have a way of learning about freetype incrementally.
 
> > Is there anyone who would like to help with this effort?
> >
> We can help if you want some help on writing some JNI wrapper for the
> library. As for a complete rewrite, it's a very time-consuming task,
> with little direct benefits to us for the moment, which is why you'll
> probably not find support from the core developers..
> 
> However, that doesn't mean that you couldn't find someone interested
> in helping you on this list..

I didn't expect the core developers to be interested :-)

But there might be others who could see the use of this?

I have waited a while for your CVS move and changes to the autohinter. 
Has that stabilised?

John Leuner

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