Re: Add support for FT_Face cloning

[Werner LEMBERG]

Hello Tayyab,


> I have been following for quite some time but David is not
> responding.  It feels to me like he is not interested in this
> proposal.

David, while still being the spiritus rector behind the scenes, is not
a regular contributor to FreeType any more due to time constraints; if
such things happen more gentle 'pings' is the right action.

> It’s okay if FreeType team doesn’t consider my contribution to be a
> worthy inclusion.  But this should have been communicated long
> before I started working on it.  I have written production level
> code with all the formatting according to FreeType’s style.  Now
> seeing my merge request going into waste is really hurting me.

I'm sorry that you feel hurt, but I don't share your point of view.
First of all, there were severe reservations *from the very
beginning*, and you have been warned.  Secondly, you have *not*
written production-level code: as mentioned in the MR, you have
implemented only a very special case that probably covers your needs,
but we have to take care of more than a single font format.  In other
words, you have submitted proof-of-concept code, which was good stuff
for discussion.

BTW, that you are following FreeType's formatting style is a matter of
course.  It's *your* job to make the life of a project's maintainers
as easy as possible.  The more the code blends into a project, the
easier it is to concentrate on the important details.

Anyway: As far as I can see, the concerns are too big to integrate
your cloning code, sorry.  Besides fundamental issues, it seems to me
that there isn't much interest from users for this functionality; at
least nobody voiced demand for it except you.

Since FreeType's development speed is rather slow it shouldn't be too
hard for you to maintain your cloning code privately for your project;
this means that your time working on the MR was certainly not wasted.

If someone is going to work on API details for FreeType 3 (which would
be thread-safe, among other things), we now have a greater sensibility
to mutability and related issues thanks to the discussion; it was
certainly helpful and important to see your code – thanks for that.


    Werner