Hi,
I'm a bit confused, as I don't fully understand the goal of a font library
in GGI. FreeType2 is a wonderful little framework and it it certainly a good
idea to bridge it from GGI. However, I don't think that the right approach
is to write a wrapper library. the FreeType2 API isn't fixed yet, and there
is more to come (text processing, layout).
I think to get the maximum out of both, FreeType and GGI, you should consider
the following:
FreeType2 uses a rasterizer to generate bitmaps from the glyph descriptions.
I'm not sure how flexible that rasterizer is but I could imagine that this
is the ideal entry point for a 'ggi target'. Providing that you could not only
speed text rendering up by avoiding unnecessary blits (if the right pixel layout
is known when the glyph is first drawn), but also by providing hooks into the
hardware for glyph caching, if applicable.
Please consider that a font engine is a very complex project in its own right,
especially if you want to provide features such as unicode support, kerning, hinting,
etc.
If you are seriously interested in professional font support for GGI, you might
communicate with the freetype developers and see whether something long the above
lines could be worked out.
Notice that this is the same argument I gave when we discussed a dvi/ps/pdf viewer
for GGI. There are already very powerful tools, all that is needed is a GGI backend.
You don't want to reinvent all that.
And, considering a font abstraction in GGI, you should start with FreeType support
before thinking about abstracting away the details. FreeType is already a very
abstract and modular tool, supporting a wide range of font types, Type1 and TT among
them, OpenType in the works...
Regards, Stefan
_______________________________________________________
Stefan Seefeld
Departement de Physique
Universite de Montreal
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...
