[ft-devel] Announcing FreeType version 2.6.4

[Werner LEMBERG]

FreeType 2.6.4 has been released.

It is available from

    http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/freetype/

or

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/freetype/files/

The latter site also holds older versions of the FreeType library.

See below for the relevant snippet from the CHANGES file.

Enjoy!


   Werner


PS: Downloads from  savannah.nongnu.org  will redirect to your nearest
    mirror site.   Files on  mirrors may  be subject to  a replication
    delay   of   up   to   24   hours.   In   case   of  problems  use
    http://download-mirror.savannah.gnu.org/releases/


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http://www.freetype.org


FreeType 2  is a software  font engine that  is designed to  be small,
efficient,  highly   customizable,  and  portable   while  capable  of
producing high-quality output (glyph images) of most vector and bitmap
font formats.

Note that  FreeType 2 is  a font service  and doesn't provide  APIs to
perform higher-level features, like text layout or graphics processing
(e.g.,  colored  text  rendering,  `hollowing',  etc.).   However,  it
greatly simplifies these tasks by providing a simple, easy to use, and
uniform interface to access the content of font files.

FreeType  2  is  released  under  two open-source  licenses:  our  own
BSD-like FreeType  License and the  GPL.  It can  thus be used  by any
kind of projects, be they proprietary or not.


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CHANGES BETWEEN 2.6.3 and 2.6.4

  I. IMPORTANT CHANGES

    - A new  subpixel hinting  mode has  been contributed  by Nikolaus
      Waxweiler, which is now the  default rendering mode for TrueType
      fonts.  It implements  (almost everything of) version  40 of the
      bytecode engine.

      The existing code  base in FreeType (the  `Infinality code') was
      stripped to the bare minimum  and all configurability removed in
      the  name  of speed  and  simplicity.   The configurability  was
      mainly aimed  at legacy  fonts like Arial,  Times New  Roman, or
      Courier.  [Legacy fonts are fonts  that modify vertical stems to
      achieve clean black-and-white bitmaps.]  The new mode focuses on
      applying a minimal set of rules to all fonts indiscriminately so
      that modern and web fonts  render well while legacy fonts render
      okay.

      Activation  of the  subpixel hinting  support can  be controlled
      with   the   `TT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_HINTING'   configuration
      option  at compile  time: If  set to  value 1,  you get  the old
      Infinality  mode  (which  was  never  the  default  due  to  its
      slowness).  Value 2 activates the new subpixel hinting mode, and
      value 3 activates both.  The default is value 2.

      At run time,  you can select the subpixel hinting  mode with the
      `interpreter-version'  property (provided  you have  compiled in
      the corresponding hinting mode); see `ftttdrv.h' for more.

    - Support  for  the  following  scripts  has  been  added  to  the
      auto-hinter.

        Armenian, Cherokee, Ethiopic, Georgian, Gujarati, Gurmukhi,
        Malayalam, Sinhala, Tamil


  II. MISCELLANEOUS

    - Type 42 fonts as created by LilyPond are now supported.

    - Minor rendering improvments in the auto-hinter.

    - For experimental  reasons, the old  CFF engine now  supports all
      CFF operators except `random', including the deprecated Multiple
      Masters  instructions.  This  allows the  display of  fonts like
      `ITCGaramondMM-It.otf' (without font variations, though).

    - Another round of fixes to improve handling of invalid fonts.

    - The `ftgrid' demo program now displays the rendered pixels also;
      this can be switched off with the `b' key.  Selection of various
      LCD filtering modes can be done with the `L' key.

    - The demo programs  have been extended to allow  selection of all
      available TrueType bytecode engines.

    - A very early beta version of a new, Qt based demo program called
      `ftinspect'  is  part  of  the   source  code  bundle;  it  will
      eventually supersede  the other  demo programs.   Currently, you
      have to compile  it manually with `qmake; make';  note that many
      features are still missing.