Hi Folks,

Damien Cassou wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 11:25 AM, Adrian Lienhard <adi at netstyle.ch> wrote:
>   
>> On Sep 10, 2008, at 10:30 , Damien Cassou wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> since 3.10 based images contained NiceFonts which causes some
>>> problems, I released 2 new images without NiceFonts:
>>> sq3.10.2-7179dev08.09.2.zip and sq3.10.2-7179web08.09.2.zip (notice
>>> the .2 at the end which means it's the second release of September).
>>> Moreover, NiceFonts seems to slow down the image.
>>>
>>> http://damien.cassou.free.fr/squeak-dev.html
>>>
>>> What do you want me to do for future dev images? Do you want me to
>>> include or exclude this buggy NiceFonts?
>>>       
>> Answering also with a rhetoric question: who wants something buggy?
>>
>> I wonder how NiceFonts can slow down the image because its just another
>> strike font. It would certainly help if you report this to the author with
>> some more details. I think NiceFonts can work, but it has to be done
>> properly (e.g., you need to import italics, else the result is not good).
>>     
>
> I already reported some problems to Juan. He didn't want to fix one of
> them: the problem with the Tools flap displaying unreadable captions.
> If you could provide a package which works well, I would certainly
> include it.
>
>   
Damien, I don't think it is fair to say that the problem in the Tools 
flap means NiceFonts is buggy. This is an excerpt from a mail I sent you 
about this issue on 7/29:

"
See #initializeWithThumbnail:withLabel:andColor:andSend:to: .
You can see that it uses Preferences standardEToysFont . So, your 
alternatives are:

1) Use a different font for #standardEToysFont
2) Modify that method to use some other font
3) Understand what the following code does (it is sent in 
#initializeWithThumbnail:withLabel:andColor:andSend:to: )
       ((labeledItem imageForm: 32 backgroundColor: nonTranslucent 
forRectangle: labeledItem fullBounds)
           replaceColor: nonTranslucent withColor: Color transparent)
   and understand why it breaks when the font has colored pixels. 
Understand what was the intention and fix it.
"

The problem is not a bug in NiceFonts and it is not a NiceFonts issue at 
all. It is the way the Forms with the labels for the Flaps are built.

Also, I don't think it is fair to complain of me not wanting to fix it. 
I'm not the maintainer of Flaps! The bug is there! If there is no 
maintainer of Flaps, or nobody wants to fix it, just use a 1bpp 
StrikeFont or perhaps a TTFont for #standardEToysFont (see options 1 and 
2 in quoted text).

BTW, keep in mind that NiceFonts does not preclude the use of either 
1bpp StrikeFonts, TTFonts, or any other font that might be present in 
the image.

WRT performance issues, please send me a comparison with actual numbers. 
Rendering 32bpp StrikeFonts should take exactly the same time as 
rendering TTFonts (the code is almost identical).

At last, let me state that I will do my best to fix any bugs found in 
NiceFonts, as I'm already doing. I use it all day long in my image, and 
it is part of at leas one commercial product now.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich