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Re: [ft] Can I send/receive FT_*Rec structs via network or RPC?
From: |
Werner LEMBERG |
Subject: |
Re: [ft] Can I send/receive FT_*Rec structs via network or RPC? |
Date: |
Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:41:34 +0200 (CEST) |
> Recently I'm trying to build a server hosting the FreeType library
> and cache objects, and clients which request the rendered character
> bitmaps from the server. The advantage of doing this is the cache
> in the server is highly shared and reused, and the clients are only
> in charge of implementing the system-specific text out procedures.
I think this only works efficiently if you don't use subpixel
rendering...
> The problem is, sending/receiving the data via network or RPC or
> pipes requires marshaling or serialization. Since there are so many
> embedded pointers in the FT_*Rec structs, and some of them even have
> private members, how do I fully serializing them? Not only do I
> need the final FT_Bitmap, but also I need many metrics and flags
> stored in FT_Face and FT_Size, etc.
What you want to do is something FreeType hasn't been designed for.
> One way to solve this problem is to wrap every client-needed field
> into a RPC function, or network request. When the client
> implementation gets more and more complicated, the RPC interface may
> become messy, and the network protocol would be difficult to
> maintain. Is there any routine way to achieve this?
I don't think so.
Werner