Cross platform TTF font render from Python [was: Load TTF from pycairo under Windows]
Hi All, I need to render antialiased PNG images using TTF font files and UTF-8 text. It needs to be available at least on Linux and Windows. This is what I have tried: #1. PIL - it has some problems and I cannot use it. Specifically, the ImageFont.getsize() returns bad value for some fonts, and there are some TTF fonts that are rendered incorrectly (UTF-8) #2. pycairo - very sophisticated, nice features, knows and does everything correctly. However, has no native support for libfreetype. I could write an extension in C and use it from Linux. Not available on windows. #3. gdmodule - I tried to install in under windows without success. No binary installer available. #4. pygame - documentation looks great, it is cross platform. But the first example program I had tried has been terminated, printing out memory dump and complaining about double freeing some memory location. What other options do we have? Thanks, Laszlo -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cross platform TTF font render from Python [was: Load TTF from pycairo under Windows]
Laszlo Nagy wrote: Hi All, I need to render antialiased PNG images using TTF font files and UTF-8 text. It needs to be available at least on Linux and Windows. This is what I have tried: #1. PIL - it has some problems and I cannot use it. Specifically, the ImageFont.getsize() returns bad value for some fonts, and there are some TTF fonts that are rendered incorrectly (UTF-8) #2. pycairo - very sophisticated, nice features, knows and does everything correctly. However, has no native support for libfreetype. I could write an extension in C and use it from Linux. Not available on windows. #3. gdmodule - I tried to install in under windows without success. No binary installer available. #4. pygame - documentation looks great, it is cross platform. But the first example program I had tried has been terminated, printing out memory dump and complaining about double freeing some memory location. ... the reportlab graphics renderPM(_renderPM) module does most things with T1 and TTF and works linux/win32. We use freetype2 internally to extract the curves from ttf and then draw them with libart_lgpl which does anti-aliasing. However, we don't render the fonts using freetype so hinting etc etc don't get done. I think something similar could be done directly with PIL and the antigrain extension. I'm surprised when you say that libfreetype isn't available on windows. It's a fairly hard road, but it can be travelled; certainly we built the parts of freetype that we needed into our extension. That required only a static library from freetype. I haven't needed to do this on windows since 2.1.5 so perhaps it's harder now. -- Robin Becker -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cross platform TTF font render from Python [was: Load TTF from pycairo under Windows]
... the reportlab graphics renderPM(_renderPM) module does most things with T1 and TTF and works linux/win32. We use freetype2 internally to extract the curves from ttf and then draw them with libart_lgpl which does anti-aliasing. I just tried reportlab and RenderPM. I got the same error others got: it looks impossible to use it for creating raster images. Details here: http://osdir.com/ml/python.reportlab.user/2005-06/msg00015.html I think something similar could be done directly with PIL and the antigrain extension. PIL would be ideal because it is lightweight and works on Windows and Linux too. But it is buggy. It doesn't render some east european (iso8859-2) characters, which we deperately need. Some TTF fonts are rendered incorrecly in PIL. Simply it doesn't work. I'm surprised when you say that libfreetype isn't available on windows. It's a fairly hard road, but it can be travelled; certainly we built the parts of freetype that we needed into our extension. That required only a static library from freetype. I haven't needed to do this on windows since 2.1.5 so perhaps it's harder now. I'll try anything that might work. In fact I have already seen articles about windows + libfreetype on the internet, but I could not find statically linked libraries built against Python 2.6. If you could send me a few hints where to start, I would greatly appreciate it. The only one requirement that I do not want to start writting C code and glue together libraries by hand. Not because I'm lazy but because I would like to have something that can be installed easily on new windows systems, and have no dependency problems out of the box. Thank you for your efforts. Laszlo -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cross platform TTF font render from Python [was: Load TTF from pycairo under Windows]
Laszlo Nagy wrote: ... looks impossible to use it for creating raster images. Details here: http://osdir.com/ml/python.reportlab.user/2005-06/msg00015.html OK your error occurs because we need to set up the renderPM canvas with an initial font (for compatibility with the PDF canvas). You can down load a zip file containing suitable files from http://www.reportlab.org/ftp/pfbfer.zip. Just unzip the pfb/afm files into reportlab/fonts and stuff should work there after. . I'm surprised when you say that libfreetype isn't available on windows. It's a fairly hard road, but it can be travelled; certainly we built the parts of freetype that we needed into our extension. That required only a static library from freetype. I haven't needed to do this on windows since 2.1.5 so perhaps it's harder now. I'll try anything that might work. In fact I have already seen articles about windows + libfreetype on the internet, but I could not find statically linked libraries built against Python 2.6. If you could send me a few hints where to start, I would greatly appreciate it. The only one requirement that I do not want to start writting C code and glue together libraries by hand. Not because I'm lazy but because I would like to have something that can be installed easily on new windows systems, and have no dependency problems out of the box. Thank you for your efforts. Laszlo I could send you the statically linked library that I use, but it's a relocatable static library ie you need to combine it with some other extension. I'm using it to combine with the _renderPM.c file to create a standalone pyd. I suspect that's not what you want. -- Robin Becker -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cross platform TTF font render from Python [was: Load TTF from pycairo under Windows]
On Friday 18 September 2009 08:54, Laszlo Nagy wrote: I need to render antialiased PNG images using TTF font files and UTF-8 text. It needs to be available at least on Linux and Windows. This is what I have tried: [...] #4. pygame - documentation looks great, it is cross platform. But the first example program I had tried has been terminated, printing out memory dump and complaining about double freeing some memory location. I'm surprised this doesn't work. I've seen games that are distributed with TrueType fonts, so I would expect them to work, or people would probably say something. :-) What other options do we have? PyQt4 can render Unicode text to all sorts of paint devices, and it supports TrueType fonts, too. You basically do all the painting via a single API: http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/static/Docs/PyQt4/html/qpainter.html Here's a quick example of how it could be done: http://www.diotavelli.net/PyQtWiki/Paint%20on%20an%20image All the relevant stuff happens in the updateImage() method. David -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
