Mark,

The value of having fonts _in_ the image is mostly that they appear on
each platform exactly the same. Pixel for pixel. If that were of no
concern, then you could just import the entire enchilada of fonts (the
same way I've been using for pulling up TTF renderings from Windows) and
just dump the entire thing when you're done (e.g., when you save the
image). So while your proposal is perfectly reasonable as long as you
stay on a single platform (possibly even restricted to a limited set of
standard fonts) it's not exactly doable across all the platforms.

Cheers,
  - Andreas


> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
> Behalf Of Mark Mullin
> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 9:21 PM
> To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> Subject: why not source typeface glyphs on demand from the 
> host os (optionally!)
> 
> 
> I've been reading the commentary about TT font licensing 
> issues with some
> interest, but the problem has all of a sudden become concrete 
> for us.  As
> the folks at Monty Python have been wont to say, we have been 
> presented with
> a poser.
> 
> Basically, we have routines in our system that make it easy to create
> textures for 3D objects from arbitrary text and font 
> selections. Yeah, we
> didn't think it was that big a deal either.....
> 
> But here's a bit of code --
> xTextureImage _ V3Image text: 'Market Cap'
> 				font: 'Courier New' weight: 500 
> height: 32
> 				italic:  false isUline: false
> 				fColor: (SFVec3f new 
> color:(Color black))
> 				bColor: (SFVec3f new 
> color:(Color green)).
> 
> We give back a handle to an image we maintain, and provide a means for
> converting this to a Form.
> 
> So did a little experiment and got a little text window going 
> where each and
> every letter was rendered via this process (great for ransom note
> typography, randomly select from set of available fonts on 
> each char) and
> performance seemed to be ok.
> 
> So, QUESTION -
> 	If Squeak started using logic to get the platforms 
> local typeface system to
> render individual letters, and this low level 'give me an H 
> in Merovingian
> at 32 point italicized' was a nice snappy routine,  is it 
> reasonable to
> assume that Squeak could survive the introduction of this 
> overhead and get
> access to the underlying font system ?  Basically, you could 
> look at this as
> effectively throwing away the internal glyphs and just doing 
> everything on
> demand.  Of course, caching is often a good thing.
> 
> IFF So,
> 	Doesn't the implicit typeface usage license 'bind' to 
> the host OS, i.e. if
> you didn't swipe the face itself, and you have a legal copy 
> of an OS that
> has a right to use the font system, then you have a right to 
> use those fonts
> on the machine?   It seems to us that if a program uses the 
> native typeface
> API, then all is cool, i.e.  OS API calling applications do 
> not have this
> problem whereas Squeak does cause it's not 'doing the right thing'.
> 
> So, if there's not much of a penalty by making Squeak (optionally!!!!)
> source it's individual glyphs on a demand basis from the 
> native OS API's,
> doesnt that make everything cool ?
> 
> 
> Regards
> Mark/Vibrant3D
> 
>