Re: [Freetype] Font Fusion vs. Freetype?

[David Turner]

Hello Paul,

Pedriana, Paul wrote:
> Additionally, one issue I've had with Freetype is that the API keeps
> changing. Practically every revision I've updated to has broken my code.
> I don't have time to futz with this and it brings an element of
> uncertainty to the development process. This may work fine for open
> source projects like Mozilla but is not a good thing for large scale
> commercial software development. 
Paul, you're probably a bit confused about the origins of your problems
with FreeType. Reading your past posts on this mailing list, it seems
that you've been unlucky enough to have to deal with bugs in the font
engine, rather than the APIs changing.

I'm thinking in particular with the computation of ascent/descent whose
sign wasn't correct until really recently for Postscript fonts.

Notwithstanding, I've taken great care *not* to break the API since a lot
of time, and several people already testified that they have upgraded
whole systems without a hitch over large periods.

There are certain features in the API that have not been stabilized and
are still completely experimental. However, these are always tagged as
"in beta" or "experimental" in the API Reference web pages. This
includes the cache sub-system.

Anything that is *not* in the API reference should be considered
internal. If you depend on one of these internal capabilities, you'd
better ask publicly for a new API to access it "cleanly".

Besides, there are a lot of things that I'd like to change in the API,
if only to make certain things clearer to typical users. But I don't,
for obvious reasons of backwards compatibility. And I'd better not
screw up, since my own Linux systems now depend critically on the
library :-)

Regards,

- David Turner
- The FreeType Project  (www.freetype.org)