Hi guys
I want to thanks andy and juan for their work! Now I need your brain and knowledge. I'm totally ignorant of font problems/challenges but
How can we get the best of both works? What are the exact pros and cons in terms of: - font - size - memory consumption
It seems that juan work is excellent for OS independence.
Stef
stephane ducasse wrote:
Hi guys
I want to thanks andy and juan for their work! Now I need your brain and knowledge. I'm totally ignorant of font problems/challenges but
How can we get the best of both works? What are the exact pros and cons in terms of: - font - size - memory consumption
It seems that juan work is excellent for OS independence.
Stef
I think Juans work is great for project/ image segments where you make some presentation for others to download and what to make sure the fonts are represented correctly, because you used some special font you can't expect other have on their system.
Karl
I don't see how the approach of Juan scales to: - unicode - different fonts - different font sizes - different font styles (bold / italic / bold and italic) But maybe I just misunderstood something.
Cheers Philippe
2007/4/29, stephane ducasse stephane.ducasse@free.fr:
Hi guys
I want to thanks andy and juan for their work! Now I need your brain and knowledge. I'm totally ignorant of font problems/challenges but
How can we get the best of both works? What are the exact pros and cons in terms of: - font - size - memory consumption
It seems that juan work is excellent for OS independence.
Stef
Hi Philippe,
Philippe Marschall escribió:
I don't see how the approach of Juan scales to:
- unicode
I don't know if StrikeFonts are good for Unicode. If they are, I didn't break them. If they aren't, I didn't fix them.
- different fonts
- different font sizes
Well,it does. Just build the bmp files and import them!
- different font styles (bold / italic / bold and italic)
Automatically derived bold looks very nice (look at my page). Automatically derived italics works, but doesn't look great. But it is possible to build the bmps and import them.
Cheers, Juan Vuletich
But maybe I just misunderstood something.
Cheers Philippe
2007/4/29, stephane ducasse stephane.ducasse@free.fr:
Hi guys
I want to thanks andy and juan for their work! Now I need your brain and knowledge. I'm totally ignorant of font problems/challenges but
How can we get the best of both works? What are the exact pros and cons in terms of: - font - size - memory consumption
It seems that juan work is excellent for OS independence.
Stef
2007/4/29, Juan Vuletich juan@jvuletich.org:
Hi Philippe,
Philippe Marschall escribió:
I don't see how the approach of Juan scales to:
- unicode
I don't know if StrikeFonts are good for Unicode. If they are, I didn't break them. If they aren't, I didn't fix them.
- different fonts
- different font sizes
Well,it does. Just build the bmp files and import them!
For every possible font size?!
- different font styles (bold / italic / bold and italic)
Automatically derived bold looks very nice (look at my page). Automatically derived italics works, but doesn't look great. But it is possible to build the bmps and import them.
Cheers, Juan Vuletich
But maybe I just misunderstood something.
Cheers Philippe
2007/4/29, stephane ducasse stephane.ducasse@free.fr:
Hi guys
I want to thanks andy and juan for their work! Now I need your brain and knowledge. I'm totally ignorant of font problems/challenges but
How can we get the best of both works? What are the exact pros and cons in terms of: - font - size - memory consumption
It seems that juan work is excellent for OS independence.
Stef
On 29/04/07, Philippe Marschall philippe.marschall@gmail.com wrote:
2007/4/29, Juan Vuletich juan@jvuletich.org:
Hi Philippe,
Philippe Marschall escribió:
I don't see how the approach of Juan scales to:
- unicode
I don't know if StrikeFonts are good for Unicode. If they are, I didn't break them. If they aren't, I didn't fix them.
- different fonts
- different font sizes
Well,it does. Just build the bmp files and import them!
For every possible font size?!
its not necessary to keep bitmaps for every point size. A good trick may be to use a largest possible font bitmap and for smaller sizes just scale it down using bilinear filter.
Yes. Until you or somebody implements otherwise.
Cheers, Juan Vuletich
Philippe Marschall escribió:
2007/4/29, Juan Vuletich juan@jvuletich.org:
Hi Philippe,
Philippe Marschall escribió:
I don't see how the approach of Juan scales to:
- unicode
I don't know if StrikeFonts are good for Unicode. If they are, I didn't break them. If they aren't, I didn't fix them.
- different fonts
- different font sizes
Well,it does. Just build the bmp files and import them!
For every possible font size?!
- different font styles (bold / italic / bold and italic)
Automatically derived bold looks very nice (look at my page). Automatically derived italics works, but doesn't look great. But it is possible to build the bmps and import them.
Cheers, Juan Vuletich
But maybe I just misunderstood something.
Cheers Philippe
2007/4/29, stephane ducasse stephane.ducasse@free.fr:
Hi guys
I want to thanks andy and juan for their work! Now I need your brain and knowledge. I'm totally ignorant of font problems/challenges but
How can we get the best of both works? What are the exact pros and cons in terms of: - font - size - memory consumption
It seems that juan work is excellent for OS independence.
Stef
No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.6.2/780 - Release Date: 29/4/2007 06:30 a.m.
Hi Stef,
Tim has given good arguments for using StrikeFonts for actual rendering and FreeType for building them, especially on slow machines. On fast machines, FreeType will look better.
Cheers, Juan Vuletich
stephane ducasse escribió:
Hi guys
I want to thanks andy and juan for their work! Now I need your brain and knowledge. I'm totally ignorant of font problems/challenges but
How can we get the best of both works? What are the exact pros and cons in terms of: - font - size - memory consumption
It seems that juan work is excellent for OS independence.
Stef
Hi Stef,
----- Original Message ----- From: "stephane ducasse" stephane.ducasse@free.fr To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 10:52 AM Subject: Font rendering strategy
Hi guys
I want to thanks andy and juan for their work! Now I need your brain and knowledge. I'm totally ignorant of font problems/challenges but
How can we get the best of both works?
The two approaches are different, and each solves a different set of problems. What ~I~ want from a font system is... 1. Automatic access to all the fonts in my host OS. 2. The ability to use them at any point size. 3. The ability to render in any colour, on any background (including a transparent background) 4. Optional support for sub-pixel anti-aliasing, without compromising points 1, 2 and 3. 5. Unicode support (in my case, not so much for language support, but rather for access to mathematical symbols) 6. Better support for printing (e.g. scale up a TextMorph's contents to my printers dpi, and output as a .png) 7. Support for different underline/strikethrough styles (e.g. text in black, underline in red; jagged underline; double strikethrough) 8. Support for subscript/superscript; raised/lowered text.
FreeType solves points 1 and 2, but they could also be solved by grabbing font info, glyphs, and metrics directly from the OS. Something similar to the Win32 Native Fonts package. (This is something I would like to do in the future - with the ability to grab ClearType/sub-pixelled glyphs on Windows, and something similar on Macs).
The BitBlt plugin enables 3 & 4.
Points 6, 7 & 8, I haven't done much with. But, for example, I render underline and strikethrough as a separate BitBlt operation, rather than modifying the glyphs to include underlining/strikethrough. So it should be easier to include different styles.
What are the exact pros and cons in terms of:
- font
My approach gives you access to fonts, without requiring that you import them. Juan's approach allows you to selectively import fonts, and to subsequently edit them.
My approach allows easy use of any point size.
Juan's approach caches the glyphs/metrics in the image, so if the image is distributed, then the font (file) does not need to exist on the target machine. My approach deliberately clears any cached glyphs/metrics on image save so that... a. there is no danger of violating font licenses by shipping cached data b. if the same font exists on the target machine, but is a different version, then the target machine's version wins (Arial on Windows 98 is not necessarily the same as Arial on Vista, or on Mac OS X)
I also support kerning and sub-pixel positioning for nice 'WYSIWYG' text layout.
- size
:) Size of what? The image? My approach has more code, but I don't cache glyphs/metrics in the saved image. VM? My approach requires the FT2Plugin, & the FreeType library on Windows/Mac.
- memory consumption
I have a glyph cache whose maximum memory consumption can be set by the user through a Preference. The default is 5 MBytes. The FreeType library also has a fixed overhead, plus an overhead per font that is used (not every font on the host OS, only those that are actually used within the image). I have tested my stuff on a 7 year old PIII with 64MBytes RAM, and it runs quite happily.
With Juan's approach it will depend upon the number of fonts/point sizes that are imported into the image.
It seems that juan work is excellent for OS independence.
Yes. Shipping glyphs in the image is a good way to ensure that they are available on all platforms. But I am not sure of the legality of that. For monochrome bitmap glyphs I think it is ok. But when the glyphs have been anti-aliased, or sub-pixel anti-aliased, I don't know?
I take a different approach and revert to using a strike font if any one of the FT2Plugin, the FreeType library, or a particular font file is absent from the user's machine. So any image, or project, should still be runnable and useable on any OS.
Cheers, Andy
thanks a lot for the explanation. So I have the impression that we could have a selected number of fonts per default using the scheme of juan so that we have a nice looking Squeak and your schema to get the full access and power. Sounds really promising.
Stef
On 29 avr. 07, at 14:43, Andrew Tween wrote:
Hi Stef,
----- Original Message ----- From: "stephane ducasse" stephane.ducasse@free.fr To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 10:52 AM Subject: Font rendering strategy
Hi guys
I want to thanks andy and juan for their work! Now I need your brain and knowledge. I'm totally ignorant of font problems/challenges but
How can we get the best of both works?
The two approaches are different, and each solves a different set of problems. What ~I~ want from a font system is... 1. Automatic access to all the fonts in my host OS. 2. The ability to use them at any point size. 3. The ability to render in any colour, on any background (including a transparent background) 4. Optional support for sub-pixel anti-aliasing, without compromising points 1, 2 and 3. 5. Unicode support (in my case, not so much for language support, but rather for access to mathematical symbols) 6. Better support for printing (e.g. scale up a TextMorph's contents to my printers dpi, and output as a .png) 7. Support for different underline/strikethrough styles (e.g. text in black, underline in red; jagged underline; double strikethrough) 8. Support for subscript/superscript; raised/lowered text.
FreeType solves points 1 and 2, but they could also be solved by grabbing font info, glyphs, and metrics directly from the OS. Something similar to the Win32 Native Fonts package. (This is something I would like to do in the future - with the ability to grab ClearType/sub- pixelled glyphs on Windows, and something similar on Macs).
The BitBlt plugin enables 3 & 4.
Points 6, 7 & 8, I haven't done much with. But, for example, I render underline and strikethrough as a separate BitBlt operation, rather than modifying the glyphs to include underlining/strikethrough. So it should be easier to include different styles.
What are the exact pros and cons in terms of:
- font
My approach gives you access to fonts, without requiring that you import them. Juan's approach allows you to selectively import fonts, and to subsequently edit them.
My approach allows easy use of any point size.
Juan's approach caches the glyphs/metrics in the image, so if the image is distributed, then the font (file) does not need to exist on the target machine. My approach deliberately clears any cached glyphs/metrics on image save so that... a. there is no danger of violating font licenses by shipping cached data b. if the same font exists on the target machine, but is a different version, then the target machine's version wins (Arial on Windows 98 is not necessarily the same as Arial on Vista, or on Mac OS X)
I also support kerning and sub-pixel positioning for nice 'WYSIWYG' text layout.
- size
:) Size of what? The image? My approach has more code, but I don't cache glyphs/ metrics in the saved image. VM? My approach requires the FT2Plugin, & the FreeType library on Windows/Mac.
- memory consumption
I have a glyph cache whose maximum memory consumption can be set by the user through a Preference. The default is 5 MBytes. The FreeType library also has a fixed overhead, plus an overhead per font that is used (not every font on the host OS, only those that are actually used within the image). I have tested my stuff on a 7 year old PIII with 64MBytes RAM, and it runs quite happily.
With Juan's approach it will depend upon the number of fonts/point sizes that are imported into the image.
It seems that juan work is excellent for OS independence.
Yes. Shipping glyphs in the image is a good way to ensure that they are available on all platforms. But I am not sure of the legality of that. For monochrome bitmap glyphs I think it is ok. But when the glyphs have been anti-aliased, or sub-pixel anti-aliased, I don't know?
I take a different approach and revert to using a strike font if any one of the FT2Plugin, the FreeType library, or a particular font file is absent from the user's machine. So any image, or project, should still be runnable and useable on any OS.
Cheers, Andy
That would be great. BTW, I'm working on a small set of fonts free of any legal issues, based on Bitstream Vera, Komika and may be others, after a suggestion by Diego. I'm pretty sure they could be part of the official release without any legal concern. The Bitstream license explicitly allows derived works.
Cheers, Juan Vuletich
stephane ducasse escribió:
thanks a lot for the explanation. So I have the impression that we could have a selected number of fonts per default using the scheme of juan so that we have a nice looking Squeak and your schema to get the full access and power. Sounds really promising.
Stef
On 29 avr. 07, at 14:43, Andrew Tween wrote:
Hi Stef,
----- Original Message ----- From: "stephane ducasse" stephane.ducasse@free.fr To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 10:52 AM Subject: Font rendering strategy
Hi guys
I want to thanks andy and juan for their work! Now I need your brain and knowledge. I'm totally ignorant of font problems/challenges but
How can we get the best of both works?
The two approaches are different, and each solves a different set of problems. What ~I~ want from a font system is... 1. Automatic access to all the fonts in my host OS. 2. The ability to use them at any point size. 3. The ability to render in any colour, on any background (including a transparent background) 4. Optional support for sub-pixel anti-aliasing, without compromising points 1, 2 and 3. 5. Unicode support (in my case, not so much for language support, but rather for access to mathematical symbols) 6. Better support for printing (e.g. scale up a TextMorph's contents to my printers dpi, and output as a .png) 7. Support for different underline/strikethrough styles (e.g. text in black, underline in red; jagged underline; double strikethrough) 8. Support for subscript/superscript; raised/lowered text.
FreeType solves points 1 and 2, but they could also be solved by grabbing font info, glyphs, and metrics directly from the OS. Something similar to the Win32 Native Fonts package. (This is something I would like to do in the future - with the ability to grab ClearType/sub-pixelled glyphs on Windows, and something similar on Macs).
The BitBlt plugin enables 3 & 4.
Points 6, 7 & 8, I haven't done much with. But, for example, I render underline and strikethrough as a separate BitBlt operation, rather than modifying the glyphs to include underlining/strikethrough. So it should be easier to include different styles.
What are the exact pros and cons in terms of:
- font
My approach gives you access to fonts, without requiring that you import them. Juan's approach allows you to selectively import fonts, and to subsequently edit them.
My approach allows easy use of any point size.
Juan's approach caches the glyphs/metrics in the image, so if the image is distributed, then the font (file) does not need to exist on the target machine. My approach deliberately clears any cached glyphs/metrics on image save so that... a. there is no danger of violating font licenses by shipping cached data b. if the same font exists on the target machine, but is a different version, then the target machine's version wins (Arial on Windows 98 is not necessarily the same as Arial on Vista, or on Mac OS X)
I also support kerning and sub-pixel positioning for nice 'WYSIWYG' text layout.
- size
:) Size of what? The image? My approach has more code, but I don't cache glyphs/metrics in the saved image. VM? My approach requires the FT2Plugin, & the FreeType library on Windows/Mac.
- memory consumption
I have a glyph cache whose maximum memory consumption can be set by the user through a Preference. The default is 5 MBytes. The FreeType library also has a fixed overhead, plus an overhead per font that is used (not every font on the host OS, only those that are actually used within the image). I have tested my stuff on a 7 year old PIII with 64MBytes RAM, and it runs quite happily.
With Juan's approach it will depend upon the number of fonts/point sizes that are imported into the image.
It seems that juan work is excellent for OS independence.
Yes. Shipping glyphs in the image is a good way to ensure that they are available on all platforms. But I am not sure of the legality of that. For monochrome bitmap glyphs I think it is ok. But when the glyphs have been anti-aliased, or sub-pixel anti-aliased, I don't know?
I take a different approach and revert to using a strike font if any one of the FT2Plugin, the FreeType library, or a particular font file is absent from the user's machine. So any image, or project, should still be runnable and useable on any OS.
Cheers, Andy
--No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.6.2/780 - Release Date: 29/4/2007 06:30 a.m.
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Andrew Tween -
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stephane ducasse