Keith Packard wrote:
>
> Around 14 o'clock on May 8, Owen Taylor wrote:
>
> > But this use is ruined if FreeType starts reporting bitmap fonts as
> > scaleable fonts and starts scaling then. (It would be really unfortunate
> > if FreeType replicated the X core situation where software needs to
> > play tricks to determine if a scaleable font is a real scaleable font
> > or a jaggied bitmap.)
>
> No, my idea was to have FreeType continue to report bitmap fonts with their
> natural size so that applications could separate fact from fiction. The
> change would be to add a way for applications to take a specific bitmap and
> request that it be rescaled to a new size, either with the existing
> transformation API, or possibly with a new API.
This seems to me to be something that the application should
have explicit control over. An API sounds like a good idea.
> It should be hard for applications to get scaled bitmaps, I certainly never
> want to see them on my screen, even if they're filtered. I've not had any
> trouble downloading TT fonts for every language I've wanted to view.
When I first had the idea of anti-aliased scaled bitmaps I assumed
they would only be a fallback or second choice. I saw them as a way
to get intermediate sizes so Unix/Linux web layout would better be
able to mirror Mac/Windows layout. Surprisingly I found the CJK
users actually liked them. I later found this in chapter 2 of the
TrueType spec:
EBSC - Embedded Bitmap Scaling Table
While this is the sort of thing that outline font
technologies were invented to avoid, there are cases (small
sizes of Kanji, for example) where scaling a bitmap produces
a more legible font than scan-converting an outline.
Brian Stell
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