Re: [Devel] PCL issues and feature requests

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I've just finished using freetype to render downloaded PCL fonts.

Nice!  Can you contribute the code to FreeType?

> The basic problem is that PCL soft fonts (True Type variety) do not
> contain a 'name' or a 'post' table. This means that freetype will
> refuse to load them because they are required tables. I altered
> freetype to treat these as optional tables and now it all works
> fine. Is there any way that in a future version of the library, I
> could specify which tables are optional and hence not have to make
> the customisation to the library source code.

What exactly do you have in mind?  Is there any other TrueType variety
besides PCL soft fonts which would need such a change?

> On another slightly different note, are there any plans for freetype
> to support Intellifont format fonts. I cannot find the specification
> anywhere ... but it's pretty low priority anyhow as I haven't yet
> seen a PCL file that uses this format for a downloaded soft font.

The main question is whether such a format is protected by patents,
and whether its specification is freely available.


    Werner