Re: [Devel] Compressed PCF fonts

[Francesco Zappa Nardelli]

KP> X normally distributes PCF fonts in compressed form to save disk
KP> space; 

I see: when the font is sparse the encoding array can be greatly
compressed.

KP> should FreeType have the ability to load these fonts directly?

WL> It is a good idea, but we get a dependency on zlib, so it should
WL> be a compiling option, and probably a separate module.  

Hum... linking to zlib requires a quite deep knowledge of FreeType
compiling process and module system.  If there are no volunteer, I can
look into this (it will take a little).

For the sake of knowledge... Is it possible to extract a LZ77
decompression algorithm from the files decompress.c and gunzip.c in
the Xfree86 tree (xc/lib/font/fontfile/...)?

WL> A BDF driver (Francesco, any progress?) would similarly benefit.

I have a BDF driver for FreeType 2.04 in my machine.  It works fine,
even if it keeps the whole font file into memory.  Adapting the driver
to parse glyph data only on demand can be done, even if it is
extremely painful.

I wonder if this work would reveal useful or not (compiling BDF to PCF
is easy and the PCF driver already parses glyphs only on demand): any
comments?

If you are interested into it, I can synchronize the BDF driver (as it
is) with the latest FreeType CVS in a couple of hours.  Otherwise
complain loudly and I will modify the BDF parser...

Regards,
-francesco