what is the status of the font rendering

Andrew Tween amtween at hotmail.com
Sun Apr 22 12:52:16 UTC 2007


Hi Bert,
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bert Freudenberg" <bert at freudenbergs.de>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2007 12:55 PM
Subject: Re: what is the status of the font rendering


> On Apr 22, 2007, at 11:37 , Andrew Tween wrote:
>
> > It is better to use FFI to get the known font paths from the OS.
>
> Even better would be to have a plugin answer that platform-specific
> font search path. I'd love to see freetype rendering go into the
> default VM, but I do not want to depend on FFI for something so basic.

Yes. That would be better.

>
> There has been talk about such a "system queries" plugin, it should
> provide access to other directories, too (like, where should
> preferences be stored, or pictures, etc.).

That's a great idea.

>
> Also, there is the HostFont plugin, which has not been ported to
> other platforms than Windows. Maybe it should be extended with a
> primitive to ask for font folders.

Or the primitive could be added to the FT2Plugin.
But I much prefer the 'system queries' plugin idea.

>
> > I don't know if it is possible to get the paths from a Linux OS
> > using FFI, hence
> > the hardcoded paths.
>
> There is no FFI way because there is no OS-wide standard. Well, the
> closest to a standard is probably fontconfig, maybe that could be
> used with FFI or a proper plugin.

fontconfig is a possibility.
This would also allow for getting other info about installed fonts, such as how
they should be hinted at various point sizes, etc.

Cheers,
Andy




More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list