Re: [ft-devel] Supporting OT-SVG out of the box

[armin]

>> You're describing two main benefits of dynamic linking and why it so popular.
>> As far as I'm concerned, static linking is rather used for edge cases like
>> static code analysis or when you can't be certain that a required library
>> exists on a system when want to run your program. 
>
> Yea, I see. The thing is, I had this really wrong image in the back of my mind
> that since FreeType is being used on so many different devices, it is supposed
> to be self-contained. In that sense, I expected `libpng' to be a part of it. I
> was dead wrong. Thanks to you guys, it's clear now! :)

Let me just throw this in here for reference;  _generally_ FreeType tries to 
avoid dependencies like these where it can;  you aren't wrong there ;)  As you 
can see, FreeType doesn't really have many dependencies, compared to a lot of 
other important Linux libraries.  You can find numerous discussions about 
using/not-using external libraries in FreeType's mailing lists -- a recent one 
was about the usage of whether to use an external logging library;  that was 
leading up to GSoC.  So people here are wary (for good reason) when it comes to 
dependencies like these -- they will always be discussed extensively.  BUT, 
adding source code like the entirety of `svgnative' is just no option (as 
discussed earlier).  The question there is rather whether FreeType _should_ 
provide functionality that requires external libraries.  One thing to consider 
is that FreeType is `as low as it gets on the font rendering stack' (as Werner 
likes to explain) and there are a great amount of libraries out there that are 
still considered `low-level' that build atop of FreeType to provide glyph 
colouring, shaping, etc.  In the case of SVG support, however, discussions have 
led to the conclusion that FreeType would benefit from it without betraying its 
core principles (of providing low-low-low-level utilities for font rendering).  
Also, SVG support is optional, so you can build + run FreeType without 
requiring it.  This is in analogy to PNG/emoticon support, btw.  If you follow 
FreeType long enough, you will definitely stumble into situations where 
external libraries are the centre of heated discussions :)

Best
Armin