Re: gEDA-user: PCB: simple FreeType fonts implementation -- update?

[Colin D Bennett <colin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 13 May 2011 16:01:08 +0000
Ineiev <ineiev@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 05/13/2011 01:55 PM, Colin D Bennett wrote:
> > It looked to me like most of the work was done in the patch but it
> > was left to rot!
> 
> In fact it was not. I was rebasing it next time few nights ago.

Good to hear.

> > Perhaps the only thing left to be done is to embed the
> > font files in the .pcb file so that it doesn't depend on system
> > fonts (future-proofing files, exchanging between systems, etc.).
> 
> This thing was not left. the fonts may be embedded or referenced
> (the latter may be a requirement of the font licensing terms);
> and system independence was (sort of) ensured with using a fixed
> version of FreeType included with the patch set.

OK, that sounds great.  Certainly there must be enough good Free fonts
that one can use so that we don't have to worry about making it
convenient to use non-Free fonts.

> What was left is a decent support of combining characters for scripts
> like Indic or polytonic Greek; this would probably require building
> another library (pango is the nearest candidate).

That doesn't sound like a reason to hold off... I mean, I didn't think
pcb supported complex scripts at this point anyway.

> > Any chance to revive this?
> 
> The characters may look great, but nobody really needs it.

Well, nobody "really needs" OpenGL support, or lots of other good
features either.  In fact the OpenGL support is nice and makes it
pleasant to work with the board, but having better font support would
produce a superior end product.  (I have found that the default PCB
font is simply unreadable for small sizes -- lines are too wide;
however I would prefer bolder strokes for larger text as well as
narrower strokes for smaller text...)

Regards,
Colin


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