Re: [ft-devel] [GSoC] ftinspect

[Alexei Podtelezhnikov]

Hi Philipp,

Your initial analysis of the current state of affairs is impressive. Thank you.

> As far as gamma is concerned, it seems that Qt does not support the
> necessary blending calculations [1] that were implemented in the old
> utilities.  So: Should the gamma blending work exactly the same as
> before (meaning that the blending code from gblender.c needs to be
> ported)?

This is a good question.  I think Alexei or Nikolaus can say more.
Note that it would be great to have a linear blending mode so that
stem darkening gives the expected results.  Similarly, a non-linear
blending could also be added to demonstrate why linear blending is a
good thing...

The tool should demonstrate how to render and blend text correctly. The tool is supposed to set the high standards of what is achievable using FreeType. I understand that almost everybody cuts corners and considers gamma-corrected blending too fancy. Somebody has to do it right. People complain about quality of text a lot, mostly blaming FreeType. So ftinspect is more than just another font viewer it should be gold standard in quality of text rendering. :)
 

> Maybe even combined somehow with the grid view so that you can
> e.g. zoom in on the hinting comparison and see the differences on a
> pixel level.  I am not sure at all what to do with ftgamma though,
> so I would appreciate any advice on that.  Is just displaying the
> images as they are now in the Qt GUI enough?

I think so, yes.  Alexei?

If you noticed ftgamma does not even link to FreeType. It produces some images to calibrate gamma and also visualize the effects of incorrect gamma for blending striped patterns as rudimentary "fonts". It is low priority.