Font Support

Lex Spoon lex at cc.gatech.edu
Tue Oct 2 05:18:50 UTC 2001



> * Query the current platform for fonts with certain characteristics. (Answer all serif, answer all monospace, answer all bold Courier, etc.  X-Windows has a mechanism for doing such searches that might be useful to look at.)
> 
> * Specify that a certain font is wanted; it then acts like a built-in font.
> 
> * Squeak then asks the platform to draw the characters.
> 
> There are issues wrt moving an image to a new platform, but I think they can be handled so long as 'Squeak itself' uses built-in, portable fonts.

The main image is lagging behind on font support -- there's more you can
do if you are willing to load extensions.  Check out this page:

	http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/696

Among other things, there are:

	1. Ways to convert true-type fonts to strike fonts, which can then be
deployed within an image.

	2. Ways to use true-type fonts directly, by use of a VM plugin that
calls a widely-ported C library.


As far as host-based fonts go, please let's not use anything that's
platform-dependent.  Andreas's suggestion of *importing* fonts from
MSWindows nicely avoids this, for example.  Any scheme that requires the
platform to draw text is almost certain to be unportable.


-Lex


PS -- at some point, we really should beef up the standard image with
some more free fonts........




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