Re: Getting Involved With Freetype

[Vincent Torri]

On Fri, Mar 10, 2023 at 6:51 AM James Hu <jameshu2022@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I do have some past experience with LaTeX, but entirely from a user 
> perspective - I have no experience with LaTeX fonts or underlying rendering 
> techniques.
>
> I did some research and found a blog post by Parth about the status of his 
> GSoC project. It seems that Parth finished the TFM, PK, and GK font 
> rendering, but was unable to complete the VFLib portion. Since the VFLib 
> portion of the project was marked as difficult, I don't believe I am ready to 
> tackle that challenge yet. In the meantime, I've been reading through the 
> rest of the FreeType docs on font rendering/hinting and have become 
> interested in the auto-hinter project. I'll be sure to follow up if I believe 
> the project is suitable for me.

just FYI : dvi2ppm (http://www.linuxcertif.com/man/1/dvi2ppm/) uses
dvilib and vflib. So you have here another example of usage of vflib.
Maybe this could help

Vincent Torri

> Sincerely,
> James Hu
>
> On Thu, Mar 9, 2023 at 3:14 PM Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Sorry for the late response.
>>
>> > Over the past few days I was successfully able to clone/make both
>> > the freetype and freetype-demo libraries.  I've also read through
>> > the documentation on the site and feel I have a rudimentary
>> > understanding of fonts, glyphs, and other font rendering concepts.
>> > However, I don't feel ready to tackle any of the issues linked here.
>> > I do have experience with C, but it was relatively basic compared to
>> > what I've been looking at in the freetype repo.  In other words, I
>> > haven't worked with codebases this large or complex.  Would this
>> > present a major problem if I want to get involved with FreeType?  In
>> > other words, is there room for learning more about C and font
>> > rendering as I go?
>>
>> This is hard to say.  A good foundation in writing C code is probably
>> a necessity.  On the other hand, I consider improving your knowledge
>> in font rendering as part of the project.
>>
>> > Currently, I am most interested in the VFLib.
>>
>> Good.  Do you have any experience with (classical) TeX or LaTeX?
>>
>> > From my understanding, TFM stores font information, while the actual
>> > glyphs are stored in PK/GF as bitmaps/raster formats.
>>
>> Correct.
>>
>> > So is the overall goal of the VFLib project then to add TFM and
>> > PK/GF rendering capability directly into FreeType? (Ideally without
>> > using VFLib as a dependency)
>>
>> Yes.  FreeType would load PK or GF fonts, and the TFM data would be
>> 'attached', similar to the already existing mechanism to attach
>> AFM/PFM files to Type 1 fonts.
>>
>> > In addition, is it possible to check if the original GSOC 2018
>> > contributor, Parth Wazurkar, is still following the mailing list (it
>> > seems that email addresses are hidden on the mailing list)?
>>
>> I don't think so; otherwise he would probably have already answered.
>>
>> > If not, is there an alternate way to get into contact with them?
>>
>> Try <parthwazurkar@gmail.com>.
>>
>>
>>     Werner