[ft] Carbon-free fonts support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) compatibility

[dipsy po]

Hi,
 
To support suitcase fonts in the resource fork (such as /Library/Fonts/Arial), 
I need to include ftmac.c in compiling freetype. The ftmac.c currently uses 
Carbon to support suitcase fonts.

However  in Leopard, all code that uses fork (I mean the UNIX fork system call, 
not the resource fork - see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork-exec) but not exec must not call any Carbon 
API, otherwise the application will crash with the error "The process has 
forked and you cannot use this CoreFoundation functionality safely." This is 
documented in Leopard release notes for CoreFoundation. See 
http://developer.apple.com/releasenotes/CoreFoundation/CoreFoundation.html 
under the section "CoreFoundation and fork()".
 
One common usage of freetype is in Apache/PHP scripts (often through GD), and 
Apache does use fork without exec. This causes Apache/PHP to crash when using 
freetype, with the above error message in the Apache error log.

If I compile freetype without ftmac.c support, it works normally, but I cannot 
use most suitcase fonts.
 
As I searched for work around, I found a message in this mailing list that 
mentions a Carbon-free method to support suitcase fonts. I figure this may 
solve the problem completely if it is also CoreFoundation free and can support 
resource fork suitcase fonts. Although some other functions, such as getting a 
font file from a QuickDraw/ATS font name, will no longer work without Carbon, I 
think it is OK, as similar functions are not available on any other OS as well.
 
In case someone has already written the Carbon-free suitcase font support, I 
would appreciate if you may share your code. I am willing to test and debug it.
 
I hope the freetype developers who are reading this message can consider to 
implement this feature quickly, as many people will certain be affected by this 
incompatible Leopard change. (I know  this problem is created by Leopard, not 
freetype, but we will have to live with it.)
 
Regards
Dipsy Po


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