Re: [ft] Another problem with X11 PCF fonts and 2.7.1, now with bisect

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> > Great, thank you! What is the default of the compile-time option?
>> 
>> It's `on' since I still think it's an improvement.
> 
> I think this behavior is problematic. A version number of the form
> x.y.z (with a changed z) colloquially implies that this release does
> not contain backwards-incompatible changes. This is obviously not
> the case here.

Sounds convincing, will change to `off' by default.

> While I think about your solution, I think it actually worsens the
> problem. Now it is not guaranteed that my configuration will ever be
> usable across distributions, since the packager of Debian may have
> made a different choice w.r.t. this parameter than the packager of
> Fedora.

Well, openSuSE is incorporating this PCF change since more than 10
years...

> So here's what I propose:
> 
> - Release a 2.7.2 based off the tag VER-2-7-1 that reverts this
>   patch without adding anything to reinstantiate this behavior.

See above.

> - Save the patch for a later, larger release (either 2.8 or 3.0,
>   depending on the versioning scheme you choose)

This I won't do.  I'll disable the feature by default, but it will
stay.

> Otherwise I think it's very likely that either a.) some
> distributions disable this feature and some don't b.) some font
> authors blank those additional fields to ensure a consistent name
> across platforms.  Neither is desirable.

Well, creating new fonts in PCF format is problematic for a lot of
reasons.  Today, you should use the SFNT format with embedded bitmaps
instead.


    Werner